Legend of Composite Part 2: Fusion
by SabaraOne
Summary: Composite, a fusion of a Mobian single-tailed fox and a sentient AI team up with Samus to clear out the scourge of the X
1. Chapter 1

**Hello Readers, This is SabaraOne, back online for a new Story. I'm excited to do this one and I hope you like it. I'll be slowing down my release of Demon Admin so I can focus on this one, but I'll still be putting them up. I'll say more at the end, so until then, enjoy!**

 **See if you can catch the reference in the chapter name.**

 **Chapter 1: Encounter at BSL**

We Link in and immediately revert to Base Form, crossing our arms over our chest. We then float in the void for a moment, letting ourselves recover from what could easily have been a decompression death in the form of Yeesha, our friend from the Myst dimensions. We had copied her form and ability to teleport without the use of a Linking Book during the year we spent on her world. While we know that morphs we create ourselves won't be affected by the lack of oxygen or pressure in deep space, we can't be sure about forms we copy from others.

After a moment, we send a jolt of energy into our left arm, rezing our Ki, a D'ni communications device given to us by Yeesha. After tapping the holographic display for a moment, a swirling blue portal appears near us, slightly behind. It pulls back to reveal the cut-off delta of our Cobra Mk. III class multipurpose starship. The portal collapses, swirling in on itself. We grab onto the hatch telekinetically and pull ourselves in. We negotiate the hatch into the airlock, down the zero G hall, and into the cockpit, strapping ourselves into the left chair and sliding our tail into the hole we'd cut into the back.

We glance to our left, activating the left panel and selecting the Contacts pane. Empty.

 _Incoming signal,_ announced the ship's AI. While we have not yet fully uplifted it, it is much more intelligent than comes with a standard ship in the Elite Dangerous dimension, _I am attempting to decipher the message… … … The message contains two words, 'Baby's Cry,' Based on this I determine it is a distress call._

"Lay in a course for the source. Move to different locations and triangulate if necessary. Alert us when the jump coordinates are ready." We respond before siting and waiting for the ship to prepare. The AI sends the ship on several moves through Supercruise, allowing the ship to move at faster than light speeds for in-system navigation.

 _Jump ready, engage?_

"You want to take this one? After that last attempt landing on a planet you could do with some practice."

 _Negative, The signal is coming from an orbital outpost. You fly it._

"Okay then," we comment, engaging the Frame Shift Drive to move our ship in Hyperspace. Upon dropping from hyperspace into Supercruise near the system star, we point the ship at the destination, max the throttle and monitor the remaining time to arrival. At seven seconds we cut the throttle to 75%. Due to the lack of a proper navigational beacon, we drop several dozen kilometers from the outpost. After about a quarter hour of sublight flight, we arrive at the destination. The outpost has a distinctly damaged look. We can see charr marks and a number of what looked like broken internal bulkheads through the viewports. We locate a docking hanger and approach. Surprisingly it actually opens automatically. To the left of our own we notice a purple ship with a large green viewport on the front. It rests on a trio of landing gear extending from the sides and back.

We depart our ship and start to explore. The hanger bay holds nothing of interest, so we move to the next room, which has a ramp in the middle. While exploring this one we think we hear a noise. We clench our right fist and extend our arm weapon, a double-barreled HECU SPAS-12 shotgun. Peeking around the next door, we see a number of platforms connected to the side walls extending over the large vertical area we are at the bottom of. Halfway up is a door sealed with a security hatch and at the top is another open door. We rez in our Ki and open a channel to our sister Risa.

"Hey sis, how're you doing on this fine day?" Risa says with a crooked grin before noticing the serious look in our eye. This is made more difficult for her by the translucent red visor in our helmet. She's never seen it before as we only use it when we feel there is danger. Risa is a feminine AI. She takes the appearance of a red-armored human female. Her armor is seamless but not form-fitting, like ours. Unlike ours, her armor doesn't have blue circuit patterns on it. She doesn't have either a Disk or a pair of katana like us. Nor does she have a helmet or a tail. Her unarmored head has mid-back length blonde hair that she usually lets lie loose. Due to our helmet, we honestly can't say if we have similar hair. We are, in fact, a clone of her and her creator Camanion, a Mobian single-tailed fox. Camanion has the same blue and purple face we have.

"We're doing fine. On a damaged space station. We think there's something in the next room. You have a weapon better for mid-range than a shotgun?"

"Yeah, check this out!" Risa says excitedly. She clenches her right fist just like we do and her arm morphs into her blaster. She's been doing a lot of work on it. Last time we saw it, the stock and barrel were recognizable and she told us it wasn't stable. Now it was very detailed, with a long barrel, an ammunition clip on the left and iron sights. It also seemed to be capable of using multiple barrels and ammunition types. "The BlasTech DC-17 Interchangeable Weapons system. It can act as an assault rifle," She ejects the magazine, detaches the barrel, replacing it with a longer one, attaches a scope and slaps a smaller magazine into the back over the course of about two seconds, "A sniper rifle firing a soled pellet encased in blaster energy," She replaces the barrel with a larger maw, popps off the scope, attaches a sort of hopper and pops a grenade in the back, "An anti-armor grenade launcher," reset to assault rifle mode with the addition of a wide-mouth barrel on the bottom, "And a non-lethal crowd control mode. It's the weapon of choice for Grand Army of the Republic commandos."

She presses a hidden control and the weapon detaches from her arm, restoring her right hand. The gun sprouts a butt and trigger, "Actually, I prefer to hold it like this."

"You got plans for the ammo?" We ask.

"Of course! Here," she sends us some data files and a packet of Resource Units, a collection of varied subatomic particles. "Have fun!" She clickeds off.

We dispel our weapon, deciding we'll need at least one hand for the coming operation. Holding out our left arm causes a dual hatch to pop open in our forearm. A laser rises out, flipping back on a turret mount before coming back front and center. We scowl slightly and dispel our Ki, not liking the look of the laser barrel clipping through it. A graphical glitch we'll sort out later. Even after almost a year and a half of subjective time since activation, some of the ways our different subsystems interact still amuse and annoy us. We hold our right hand in front of us and point the turret at our hand. It glows for a moment before firing a stream of coherent light which darts around n a small rectangle, forming one of the assault rifle magazines. A series of images flash on our visual sensors.

 **AMMUNITION DETECTED : ANALYZING…  
TYPE: LASER BLASTER  
FIRE RATE: HIGH  
DAMAGE: MODERATE  
READY**

We retract the digitizing laser, transferring the magazine to our left hand and extend our arm weapon. A slot opens just behind the pump in the left side and we slap the mag in, pumping the shotgun. The upper barrel extends and narrows slightly while the lower barrel widens. A quick test fire later we start to give a sadistic grin, "Yes…we can work with this."

We pop through the open door, weapon at the ready. We hop from platform to platform, wondering how this could possibly be legal to build, then thinking about the irony, considering what we are like in the dimension we consider to be our home. The next room has a large and somehow unbroken window. It has a sort of "bathtub curve" shape to it. The walls are white and pink for some reason we'd never understand. The next room has a large number of platforms and sealed doors. A sealed hatch is in front of us. It's different however. We place our hand on the door and sense a large amount of electrical activity on the other side, plenty of computers. We explode into a swirl of red data cubes and flow through the door, reforming into our red-armored self on the other side. The room is painted green with a number of large consoles and a plate in the middle. We avoid the plate, sensing that it connects to the communications systems and move out the open door.

The room is quite dark. We activate our visual sensors Night Vision mode. Our visor flashes from translucent red to solid green. This room has a locked hatch directly in front. We ignore it and hop up two platforms and then to a third. Off to the right we notice a thin passage and immediately start compiling a morph form small enough to travel through it. The next room has a number of platforms and a small tunnel I front of us, caused by a door blocked mostly by debris. We drop down to the bottom, telekinetically slowing our fall a the end. We note movement in the next room and hop up a few platforms, jump into the void, invert, and telekinetically stick ourselves to the wall, with our head, shoulders,and arms sticking partway around the edge of a low ceiling. We click a hidden control and the magazine clicks out of our arm weapon. We hold up a sniper mag and wait for it to be scanned.

 **AMMUNITION DETECTED : ANALYZING…  
TYPE: SOLID-CORE LASER RIFLE  
FIRE RATE: LOW  
DAMAGE: HIGH  
READY**

We slap in the magazine and our shotgun's lower barrel turns into a grip stock and the top barrel extends into a rifle. A scope rezes on top. We look through it at 10x and switch to 20x. At this point we can easily see a heavily damaged room with the words "Quarantine Bay" on a sign at the front. At least that's what we think it says. There are a number of broken cabinets and tables blocking significant portions of the floor. A blue and red hardware program hops over each obstacle, With each jump it almost curls into a ball. Behind the last some sort of horned toad jumps around, oblivious to the world. When the hardware program jumps the last barrier, the toad spins mid jump and opens its mouth facing towards the hardware program. We note that its mouth is glowing and that the hardware is bringing an arm cannon of some sort into line. Luckily for us, the hardware is not between us and the toad. A beam of blue light connects our shotgun and the toad for a second.

At this point, several things happen at once. The toad dissolves into a yellow floating creature, we drop down, inverting as we fall and landing on our feet, and the hardware program whirls around, aiming at us.

 **And that's the first chapter of the second mainline story in the Legend of Composite series.**

 **So… Where do I start? Well, so yes. This story is based on Metroid Fusion, though with "gameplay" for lack of a better term closer to Prime or Other M. I know that Fusion is considered to be one of the worst in the series, but I really don't care. If you have a problem with that… Well, take it up with me in a PM. I love flamewars anyway.**

 **The DC-17 is used in the Star Wars: Republic Commando novel series and video game tie-in. The game may have not been as good as, say, Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon, but it did have its charm. If the game is anything to go by, Risa taking two seconds to switch attachments is pretty slow. All the attachments Risa shows are in the novels at least.**

" **Encounter at BSL" is a reference to the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot "Encounter at Farpoint." Why? No idea! I just needed something to name the first chapter.**

 **Now that I'm running mainline, Shoutout this week goes to redditor Tuxedo_Jack. This guy has been on Tales from Tech Support almost as long as Gambatte. He's also probably the closest to a real-life… Well I can't mention the other guy in a K+ story, maybe not even a T. He does appear in one of my other stories thugh… To put it this way, you never take** _ **anything**_ **off of Jack's desk. One of his latest stories involves an engineer who took a 5 port switch from Jack's desk and blew up a modem, a router,and a motherboard because it had been "modified" to pump raw mains power into the ethernet jacks. Not pretty. He also invented Camanion's (as yet unrevealed) weapon of choice.**

 **As always, feel free to review, after all, how can I know what my readers think if I'm not told eh?**

 **So until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out!**

 **And hey, I finished a chapter 3 days before release schedule! Unheard of!**

 **EDIT: Since I know somebody's going to complain, I know that Mobians are from Sonic. I'd have listed it as a crossover except that 1. The only purely Mobian character I may even mention is Camanion and 2. even if she _does_ appear, it'd be as little more than a cameo.**


	2. Chapter 2: Main Deck

**Hello Readers, I'm online once again!**

 **Chapter 2: Main Deck**

Samus was calmly investigating the Quarantine Bay, jumping and clambering over damaged equipment. Her ship's AI had told her that there had been an explosion here, and that's what had started the whole mess at BSL. Samus was convinced that she should have recognized the X as a dangerous lifeform. _And speaking of dangerous lifeforms, how did the hornoad get up here?_ Samus thought, starting to brink her Power Beam to bear on the target, which was already preparing to spit a fireball. Unexpectedly, a beam of blue light slammed into the hornoad. Samus's HUD helpfully illuminated the path of the beam.

Samus whirled around, reflexively firing a shot at the hornoad, and watched a creature drop from the ceiling in the next room. It started falling fast, and then about halfway down a green-white energy field started to glow under it and it slowed, standing to a full humanoid height as it landed. It floated just an inch above the ground on the energy cushion, entering the room with a sort of skating motion. It seemed to be wearing a powersuit of some sort, but in the low light she couldn't be had bright blue lines covering its body and its right arm ended in what looked like a cross between a shotgun and a sniper rifle. It had a helmet with upward pointing spikes and a green visor, not unlike hers.

"Who are you?" The creature asked in accented English. Samus thought it was a British accent, but she wasn't an expert. She had a female voice of the sort that never needed raising. Samus noted the presence of what looked like sword handles poking above her shoulders.

"I am Samus Aran, intergalactic bounty hunter. What, or who, are you?"

"We are Composite, a wetware-software fusion symbiont. We detected the distress signal from this station and came to investigate."

"My ship's AI locked the hatch to the Navigation Room. How did you get through?"

The green cushion faded as Composite floated to the ground. "So, what was that yellow thing?"

"What yellow think?"

"The toad thing dissolved into a yellow blob when we shot it, It flew into you and you absorbed it."

Samus swore, "That's an X parasite. It infects a host and copies its DNA. It is capable of emulating its host after killing it. I was infected recently, surviving only because of a vaccine created using cell cultures from an organism called a Metroid. I must report this immediately."

Composite jerked their weapon closer to lining up with Samus, "The last time a program told us that, he attacked us within a nanosecond."

"I have no orders to attack non-hostile organisms"

"We are not an organism," a wrist-mounted device appeared on Composite's left hand, projecting a pair of holograms appeared, "We are a fusion of a Mobian single-tailed fox and a Turing-class Artificial Intelligence. Clones of our sisters Camanion and Risa in fact. By the biological definition, we are not an organism."

"But you are currently non-hostile."

"Undeniable," Composite agreed, "But let's go to your Navigation Room."

* * *

Our visor clicked to clear transparency, revealing our face as we entered the well-lit Navigation Room. We shook our head to clear the spots from not switching off Night Vision fast enough. Samus started at our fox-like face. Samus stepped onto the central plate. It sank slightly under her weight. She faced the main display, which turned blue. We stepped forward, but Samus waved us back. It hadn't occurred to us, but she was slightly over a head taller than us.

A harsh metallic voice rang out, grating on us. "This isn't good… The X have spread at least to Main Deck. You barely survived your last encounter. Fortunately, the Metroid Vaccine has given you an advantage over the X. You are immune to infection, in fact, you can absorb them to recover energy and weapon ammunition. However, I'm picking up significant bio-signs in this area." A map of the deck scrolled and an objective mark appeared. The X are massing. Keeping them out of the breeding labs is top priority."

Samus nods, "Understood," She is clearly relieved at the fact that she hasn't been infected by the X, "I found a possible ally when exploring the quarantine bay," she gestures us forward, and we step onto the plate, "This is Composite. They seem to have significant combat power."

"They?" the AI asks.

"We are a symbiont of sorts."

"Understood. I'll keep an eye on you, but you can work with Samus."

"Though for the record, I work best alone," Samus comments.

"That makes two of us," we respond.

"Samus," the AI interrupts, "You are currently at 10% battle capacity. Your chance of survival is very low. I've unlocked level 0 security hatches. Look for the flashing doors. Now GO!"

The screen goes dark. We have, of course, memorized the map.

The previously locked door opens. We follow Samus out of the navigation room.

We jump up one platform, onto an overhang, onto yet another overhang, up two small platforms on a scaffolding and to a door. It has a flashing hatch. Samus opens the door by simply shooting it. We glance curiously at her and she simply shrugs. "I don't know why the doors open when they're shot. That's just how it works."

We walk into the room, slapping a DC-17 assault rifle mag into our shotgun. The long upper barrel shortens so that it is only. Slightly longer than its standard length and the stock emerging from the lower barrel shrinks and widens.

An X floats down and forms a hornoad. "Spread!" announces Samus. She jumps to the left and we cartwheel to the right, bringing our weapon in line and shooting it twice. It dissolves and Samus jumps forward, curling into a ball and absorbing the X. "Composite: 2, Me: 0" Samus comments, "Let's even it out a little shall we?"

"Only if you speed up!" We say with a laugh, our visor fading from the solid red of combat to the translucent red of danger.

We run up the stairs and shoot the door, almost surprised when it opens for us. The next room is empty but for a floating circular platform in the middle, "Any idea what that is?" We ask.

"Only one way to find out," Samus states, jumping onto the platform. It sinks down and, according to Samus transmits her biometrics to her ship. Pointless.

In the next room, Samus snipes a zombie and dashes forward to get the X. We hop up three platforms and eject the magazine from our shotgun. The barrels revert to their normal form. We jump up to the fourth platform, bowling over another zombie and blasting it in the head before it can react. "Go infect Samus," we tell the X that bounces fruitlessly off of our data shell. The little yellow blob floats away, seeming almost dejected.

The third platform leads to a door, blocked by a large barrier. Samus shoots it a few times, and none of our weapons dent it. We think for a minute and digitize an anti-armor grenade

 **AMMUNITION DETECTED : ANALYZING…  
TYPE: ANTI-ARMOR GRENADE  
FIRE RATE: LOW  
DAMAGE: HIGH  
READY**

The bottom of our weapon, where a real shotgun would load shells, expands. We slide the grenade into the slot and slap it home. "Stand clear!" We announce, firing the grenade in an arc. It takes a chunk out of the barrier, which promptly regenerates. Four grenades later, we decide to give up.

Up two platforms and through a door is a Navigation Room. We step onto the plate with Samus.

"Samus, HQ have told me they can support you with downloadable weapons data. They can currently send you Missile data. Proceed to the Data Room." A new mark appears on the map, "With Missiles, your chance of survival rises to 20%."

We step off the platform and through the next door. Samus blasts two zombies before we can even bring our weapon into line, having previously reloaded the blaster ammo. We follow Samus up a few platforms and into a room with nothing but an elevator. We follow Samus onto the platform and press a button on the back. The elevator rises.

"You know, That computer reminds me of my former CO, Adam Malcovich. I remember during missions he used to call me 'Lady.' He was the only one who could call me that without it sounding sarcastic or belittling. Out of respect and irony, I'm calling the computer 'Adam,' but not to its face, as it were."

"Understood," we comment.

We follow Samus through a door, up an overhang, and into the navigation room, through the nav room and into a data room. It is brightly lit with a chamber in the middle. Samus steps in and the chamber activates, surrounding her in a yellow field of energy. She steps out and sends a missile into the ceiling, her arm cannon opening up into four parts and spinning slightly before closing into the normal configuration. She follows us back into the navigation room.

"You have your missiles. Good. Electrical interference has locked out the elevators. The X may have done this. I'll look into it. In the meantime, find another way to the target." Samus nods, we throw a sloppy salute and "Sir, Yes Sir!"

We walk out and spot a plate on the wall that begs for a good missile. Samus aims and fires. The panel clatters to the floor. We platform to it and jump through into a tall air duct. It was blocked by one of the barrier X. Samus blasts it with three missiles and it dissolved into a green X. Samus absorbs it and comments that it recharges two missiles. We follow her through several ducts and ladders. Along the way she picks up a missile expansion, giving her five more of the little beauties to play with and ducks into a side chamber, shooting around randomly until finding a second. We draw our katana and chase down a zombie, plunging the blades in, rotating them sideways, and slicing outward, much to the annoyance of the X parasite.

We emerge from the air ducts and shot a zombie. The two chambers leading up along a staircase contain a dead end and a floating platform room. The third door is at the same level as the duct. It is guarded by a zombie and some sort of eye-guard. It opens its eye and sometimes it peeks out, sometimes it shoots an energy wall. The zombie also keeps being reanimated by new X. We keep the zombie occupied while Samus waits for the eye to appear and shoots it with a missile, occasionally jumping an energy blast.

Samus absorbs a red X from the dead door guard and opens it. "Come on, let's go." We shoot after her on a wave of telekinetic energy. She climbs up a group of ledges, grabbing onto the edge and jumping to the next. We tuck our legs under us and follow on a cushion of power.

"Hey, what's that?" We ask, gesturing to a red sphere on the floor with a large 'E' on the side.

Samus pick it up and slip it into a slot in her right arm, "An Energy Tank. It increases the amount of damage my suit can take." She proceeds towards a hole in the floor.

"Wait," we said, noticing something on the ceiling. We divert full energy to cognitive functions, our head glowing brightly as our visual acuity increases significantly, "There's something up there," we pointed, "Try shooting it." Samus obligingly pumps two missiles into the spot, revealing a tunnel. She jumps up and emerges a moment later. We reset power and all our circuits equalize brightness.

"Energy Tank," she says, "Let's go." She jumps down the hole. We follow, breaking our fall and landing on the bottom of the hole… Which collapses under us, dropping us into a room. Samus drops from a ledge she grabbed just above the floor and snickers, "Saw that coming. Welcome to the club." Her expression changes.

"Our target is behind us, isn't it." We state, turning around. A large X hovers in the middle of the room, surrounded by a group of smaller X. The collection floats to the ground and turns into something like an armadillo. Samus's arm cannon opens into missile configuration and we slap in an anti-armor grenade. The creature screams and flings a sonic wave in front of it. We flow up and Samus grabs onto a ledge.

"Looks like the X have made some improvements," Samus comments, "last time I fought one of these it couldn't do that…." The creature throws a carpet o fire onto the ground before curling into a ball and surging towards the wall under Samus, "But it could do that," she finishes, jumping over its head and landing on her creature slams into the wall and whirls around. Samus shoots a missile at it. It screams in pain and we fire a grenade at it. The grenade arcs beautifully and slams straight into its underbelly. Samus leaps over it, dodging the shrapnel from the detonation. We create a telekinetic shield. The creature throws another fireball that we jump over. We continue to fire at its underbelly. After a minute, it dissolves into a large, shielded X. We slam a grenade into it and Samus puts two missiles into it. The shield disappears and Samus absorbs the resultant X. On landing she curls into a ball just over two feet tall.

 **COMPILATION JOB COMPLETE: BALL FORM READY**

We pop up into the air, green energy swirling around us. When it fades, a ball about the same size drops to the ground.

"Great minds think alike," Samus comments.

We follow Samus down a small tunnel. We revert to Base Form and Samus comes out of ball form, jumping over a large pile of trash. We follow her through a series of passages, emerging in a familiar chamber. We took off, blasting zombies and beating Samus to the navigation room by a solid minute.

"So," Samus asked, "Shall we make our report?" She stepped onto the navigation room's platform and we followed.

The AI activated the screen, "Samus, Composite, it is as I feared…"

 **So… What happened? I'll have the answer up next week!.**

 **As you may have noticed, Samus doesn't use any of her Other M melee junk, but Composite does whatever Composite darn well wants.**

 **My guess for how I'm going to do my uploads during a mainline story is that there will be an upload on Saturday with the mainline story. There will be a minimum one spin-off such as Demon Admin every two weeks on Wednesday. If I have one, I'll put it up every week.**

 **I'm sorry about the bad formatting last chapter. I'll have that sorted out by the time this chapter goes up. I forgot to finish my formatting after uploading.**

 **I updated the list of Composite's known abilities to reflect the newest ones.**

 **I forgot to mention this, but when Composite summons their ship is sort of a combination of the portals from Mortal Kombat and the Homeworld Hyperspace effect.**

 **So until next time, this is SabaraOne, Logging Out!**


	3. Chapter 3: Sector 1

**EDIT: Wow... I must have been _really_ sleep deprived when I posted this one. The formatting's so bad I almost wouldn't discount drugs if I didn't know for certain I've never used any.**

 **Chapter 3: Sector 1**

"…The X have invaded the breeding environments. In particular Sector One is showing many anomalies on bio-sensors. Sector 1 is a perfect re-creation of the SR388 Biosphere. Take the Main Elevator to the access shafts and from there take Elevator One. I fear that whatever let the X in may be linked to the previous explosion." The AI signs off.

"That and your unlocking the hatches," we murmur.

"What?" Samus asked.

"Nothing."

We click our visual sensors into Night Vision mode and enter the next room. Samus's suit emits a slight glow. We hop up two platforms and onto a third.

"Hey Samus, think we should investigate that?" We asked, pointing out a small tunnel.

In answer, Samus morphs into ball form and rolls in. After a moment, she rolls back out. "I found a missile expansion and something else. I think you'd better go check it out." We put the blaster rifle mags we'd been juggling back at our waist, about where a human would wear a belt and pop into the air, green energy swirling around us as we morph into our ball form. We roll in and pick up some sort of cuboid object on the other side. It emits a strange energy field we can't identify. We put it in Hammerspace and return to Samus, who is patiently waiting at the next door, the one with a drop leading to the quarantine bay. We hop over the gap and morph, rolling through a small tunnel and open a door on the far side.

We open a Ki channel to our sister Cmanion. Her blue with purple muzzled fox face appears on our screen. "What you got?" She asks.

We send her the energy signature readings. She promptly drops her game controller and treats us to a minute of loud clattering from her nice mechanical keyboard. She occupies the time by quipping, "You know you've been hacking too long when your computers have a higher street value than your house. And my computers have a _much_ higher street value… Well, this is interesting, it looks like the device should be able to increase your RU capacity, allowing you to carry more ammunition for your auxiliary weapons. Try loading it."

We load the expansion unit and pump our weapon.

 **RU Expansion installed  
RU Capacity Increased**

"That all?" Risa asks, already reaching for her gamepad.

"Yup, that's all," we say, finishing walking down a hall, through a door and into an elevator chamber and clicking off the Ki.

"Who was that?" Samus asks.

"Our sister and wetware template Camanion. Our wetware components are cloned from her."

"Ah, so that's why she looked like you."

* * *

Meanwhile, at the top of the shaft…

An explosion shatters one wall. Samus wearing her Varia Suit walks through the hole and pauses for a moment. A security camera pans toward the disturbance. It zooms in on the face. The face looks almost identical to Samus's, distorted slightly by the translucent green visor. The eyes are pure white with no iris or pupil. The last frame recorded by the camera is a rapidly approaching mid-Screw Attack Samus. The audio sensors detect a second explosion, presumably the hatch being blown open followed by rapidly fading footsteps.

* * *

We hear a massive explosion above us as the elevator glides to a stop at the bottom, powering down. " _Shab_ " we growl out.

"Huh?" Samus asks, apparently not being fluent in Mandalorian.

"Don't ask." We lead the run to Sector One. Down the elevator and through a door leads to a navigation room. We situate ourselves on the platform and Samus activates the console.

"The main elevator has been severely damaged. It will be unusable for quite some time. There is an unknown agent at work here. Something powerful. Certainly not human," the AI beings.

"Figured that out by yourself? Your programmer must be proud," we jump in.

"…Right, I'll report back when I know more. Anyway, listen closely. The X have invaded the Atmospheric Stabilizers. They are altering the environment to suit their needs. They are already reproducing. There are five Atmospheric Stabilizers. Go and make it a non-issue."

We run through a biometric room and into a chamber with a console in the middle. Samus grins, "I can use this," She steps in front of the console and a tube extends into her Arm Cannon, reloading it.

We step forward in front of the console., "Shouldn't surprise us that they have RUs."

The next room has four platforms, an enclosure around a green door in the upper right, a blue door at the bottom left white hatch at the bottom right and us at the top left. We slot an assault rifle clip and mow down three zombies. The white hatch leads to a long hall with a Barrier X at the end. In the middle are a collection of floating balls.

"Hey Composite," Samus asks, beam already blazing, "Is that disk on your back any good?"

In response we slice the barrier in half with one throw. "Nice, where'd you get that? Think I might just get one."

We grab the Disk as it returns to us, "Good luck with that, this Disk is literally a part of us," Noticing Samus's confused look, "We'll explain later."

The next room is filled with mist and fog. We slowly make our way up two platforms, along a long overhang and drop down onto another platform. The Stabilizer is up ahead, covered in some sort of growth. Every two seconds or so it flickers and releases a yellow or green X. Samus pumps three missiles into it over the course of about three seconds. "Sometimes I wish this thing would fire faster," she comments.

"Try switching to beam mode between missile shots." Samus tries this and triples her rate of fire.

"Hey Composite, how did you know about that?"

"Just a hunch," we said. This was mostly true. We'd briefly heard one of our coworkers discussing it back in our home dimension, but knowing the intelligence and accuracy of the average User, we'd taken it with a grain of salt.

In the next room we quickly blast four Hornoads. Their X immediately float up and form some sort of black flying creature with an orange eye.

"Oh, I remember these," Samus says, giving her rapid fire missile trick a field test, "Needs a missile or a charge shot, and I can't charge shot yet."

We enter the next room, hop over a gap and enter an atmospheric stabilizer room. Samus shoots out the bottom of a pillar and a Hornoad hiding behind it. We run through, gun swinging from side to side as we scan for targets. Seeing none, we dash across and hop up a platform, turn around, and hop onto the celling of the last corridor.

We follow the tunnel and Samus blasts another Hornoad. We glance up and shoot out the weak ceiling of the tunnel, revealing another passage above us. We tuck our les under us and float up, Disking a Hornoad and sniping another. Samus pumps three missiles into the stabilizer, destroying the X and absorbing it. We return to the laast room and drop down one level, entering a room under our first entry point.

"For the record," Samus comments, "Hornoads couldn't spit acid last time I encountered them back on SR388."

We notice the enemy in front of us, "Hey, that looks like a cross between a hedgehog and one of those alien _chaka_ from The Live."

"Yeah, they're armored in front, so normal shots won't scratch them, but a missile or shot to the back will finish them." Samus gets its attention and it surges forward. Samus casually hits it with a missile at the last second and absorbs the green X.

The next room is a vertical shaft. Several purple walhugger creatures crawl up and down, shooting energy beams. "Zebesians," Samus identifies, "After the BOTTLESHIP I really shouldn't be surprised. Just dodge them, they're not worth the ammo." Saying this she goes into Morph Ball, and we transform into our own ball form. We drop down, almost effortlessly dodging the beams and critters. The next room has some sort of creature underwater that shoots small pellets of energy. Samus completely ignores it as it doesn't have the range to hit us from the bottom of its depression. We simply jump over it and continue on.

The next room contains an atmospheric stabilizer. In front of us is a hole. Two ladders go up two sides of it and a platform hangs in empty space . We glance questioningly at Samus and she shrugs, "Don't ask how the platforms float. I don't." A horizontal ladder goes along the ceiling.

"Normally we'd just float across, but when there's a convenient ladder one feels obliged," we comment.

We cross the ladder to the pillar making up the far side of the hole. Samus shoots the X on the stabilizer with a missile but it simply bounces off., "Blast! It's shielded. We'll either need to hit the bottom or other side. Oh well." We hot down two platforms and climb a ladder. The shielding opens up on the other side and we finish it off. The stabilizer whirs to life.

"Hey Samus, check this out! We say, hopping down to the floor and jumping behind a Hornoad. Samus aims at it, but waits to see our little trick. We place our hand on its back, which does sting a bit, but we ignore It and state firmly "Download!"

 **Copy Form  
Name: Hornoad-X  
Type: Parasite: Wetware Semi-Sentient Host: Wetware Non-Sentient  
Abilities: Movement by jumping, Spit acid  
Strengths: None  
Weaknesses: Low Damage, Slow and Hard to Control Movement, Low Defense  
Known Morph Restrictions: None  
Copy Complete  
Verification Complete**

Our form briefly changes to that of the Hornoad before reverting to our Base Form. With no more use for it, we quickly finish it off with a sword. "That's odd," we say in a curious tone.

"What, the fact that you briefly turned into a Hornoad?" Samus asks.

"No. Normally when we copy a form we can't use it in the dimension we got it from, but we have no such restrictions here. Maybe it's because the X are so common?"

"Copy… form?"

"What? You didn't think we can only turn into a ball did you?" We ask, amused. We pop up into the air. A vortex of green energy surrounds us as we transform into the Hornoad form. We turn around and give the second toad an acid bath it won't live to remember before returning to our own form.

"Nice," Samus says, "Can you copy any form?"

"Just about, we haven't really tested it properly though."

The next room contains one of the hedgehogs which we promptly copy (Charge attack, armored front, weak to explosives and rear attack) and continue on our way. The room after is the simplest stabilizer yet. Jump up two ledges, climb a horizontal ladder and missile time.

At the top left is a door leading to a room with the same small creature after the zebezians and missile and RU expansions. We take our respective enhancements and leave. The door to the right bottom leads to a vertical shaft full of Zebesians (Climb walls, powerful energy beams, weak to explosives) the room at the top is a flooded corridor with a horizontal ladder. We climb along, blasting two little water sprayers and shooting out part of the next wall leading to a door, drop down a vertical shaft and climb up the next, blasting off a door guard X.

The door locks behind us. Samus runs across the room and stops in front of a gray statue holding a spotted ball. "A Chozo Statue. These are always useful." She thinks for a moment "…Except for those two on Zebes, but I'm sure this one isn't like those." She shoots the ball and it disappears, making a sound like a hurt X. "Oh sh-"

The statue changes into a large shielded X. Sams missiles it to no result. It opens an eye and shoots a beam at he. We speak up, "In our experience, shooting the eye is usually a good idea."

"Of course! Now let's do it!" Samus responds, pumping a missile into the eye and dodging the return shot. We give it an anit-armor grenade to think about andd Samus finishes it off with another missile, absorbing the core.

"Hey, I've got my charge beam back!" Samus says happily. Her beam glows red and fires a thick shot. We jump up the room and to the top door.

"The nerve of that X!" Samus says, clearly steamed. She shoots a loose ceiling panel to reveal another room above us, "Imitating a Chozo statue! I wish I could kill it again just for that!" She missiles a panel across from the door, hanging on an otherwise pointless ladder.

"What's wrong with it?" We ask, genuinely curious.

"What's wrong?! The Chozo are a peaceful people. They haven't fought a war in centuries! Most of the statues aren't even capable of attacking!" She calms down for a second, cathartically blasting water spitters and grabbing a Missile expansion, "After the space pirates killed my parents when I was four, the Chozo took me in. They raised me until I was sixteen when they gave me my suit. It took them a nice long while to find it too. It was in a warehouse full of broken weapons and war equipment that were mostly used by young Chozo for experimenting with. I'm actually part Chozo since Grey Bird used his own blood to augment my DNA."

"…That makes sense," is all we can think of to respond with. Samus nods, understanding instantly that we can't find the words and they wouldn't sound adequate if we could. We project the map from our Ki and announce, "Now let's go get that last stabilizer online!"

We have to drop down an overhang and enter a small alcove to kill the last X. Samus doesn't even missile it, just uses her new charge beam. It's cleared in short order. We proceed out the lower door and shoot the gate open in the next room, allowing us back into one of the familiar vertical shafts, quickly proceeding to the Navigation Room.


	4. Chapter 4: Sector 2

**Okay, I just want to get this very clear. I'm not going for 100%. Partly because I'm not describing everything Composite and Samus do, and partly because I only know where about 50% of the items are. Also, I'm not looking up names for any enemies except the bosses. If I know it I'll use it, if not I'll just describe it. Get over it.**

 **Also, don't expect this on time. It's the same complaint that is common among all FF writers my age. Need I explain further?**

 **Chapter 4: Sector 2**

"Atmospheric Stabilizers online. Despite this, the X have entered Sector 2, the tropical sector, abbreviated TRO. I'll brief you further when you get there." The AI announces. A wireframe diagram of the station rotates, bringing sector 2 front and center. We sign off and proceed back to the main deck sector hub.

On the elevator Samus turns to us, "You know, when that AI briefs us, I can't help but think of the real Adam. He understood me. I remember he'd finish every briefing with 'Any objections, Lady?' He knew I wouldn't disagree, well, not beyond saying the opposite of whatever reaction he wanted. He was the only person who could call me Lady without it sounding belittling or sarcastic. I couldn't say the same of the other squad members though. I wonder if I can trust the computer the same way I used to trust Adam."

We run out of the room with the sector 1 elevator and cross the circular hub to Sector 2 and connect to Samus's ship. We check with our ship and, unsurprisingly, find that Cobra has noticed nothing of importance. Samus's ship starts the briefing

"I have determined the identity of our intruder. It is an X mimicking Samus. It appears to have modified itself somewhat though, as some of the damage it has caused appears to have been fire damage." We flinch slightly at this, "So, to make things a bit easier, HQ has sent bomb data. There is a data room in this sector, but there's a problem… The map on the screen scrolls to the data room. "The data room is secured with a Level 1 Hatch. You'll need to find a security room to open it. I can't show you the location. It's not stored in the computer anywhere. Once you have bombs, return here. As for the X mimicking you, I've dubbed it the SA-X. It used a Power Bomb to escape, releasing the X-infected specimens. But the SA-X is your primary concern. Don't try to fight it. It mimics you at full power. You are still quite weak, especially to cold, a side-effect of the Metroid vaccine. Like a Metroid, you can be frozen with the Ice Beam. Needless to say, it has one. Based on the cameras, it is armed with Ice, Diffusion, and Plasma. I can't tell if it has Charge or Wave, but it would be a safe assumption. It also has Screw Attack and probably Space Jump. It certainly has Super Missiles and Power Bombs. It has Varia, but I can't be certain about Gravity. It does, of course, have morph ball, and it probably has bombs and spring ball. Anyway, go get the security door and get those bombs."

We run through the biometric room and into the recharge room, which Samus uses. We step up and place our hand on the console. The console extends and ejects a Missile. We pick it up.

 **AMMUNITION DETECTED: SCANNING…**

 **TYPE: SELF-PROPELLED EXPLOSIVE MISSILE**

 **DAMAGE MEDIUM**

 **FIRE RATE: MEDIUM**

 **READY**

We load the missile and pump our shotgun. The barrel extends and opens in a cross. We eject the missile and reload an assault rifle clip. Samus has a pensive look on her face. "Something on your mind?" we ask, sensing that it's one of those things that she doesn't want to talk about, but really should. Sensing by experience, not telepathy.

"…Yes, the SA-X" Samus says after a moment, "I know that I didn't have any way of knowing, but I can't help the feeling that I'm responsible for the SA-X."

We think for a moment, "Well… We think of it this way. If you were to walk on apparently flat field, no way to know anything's wrong, and a mine blows up under you, could that be clled a mistake?"

"Uh… No?" Samus isn't sure where we're going, but she's got a pretty good idea, "Not legitimately anyway."

"Did you have any way of knowing the X were dangerous?"

"I should have thought of it, I thought it had just splattered against my armor. I've seen plenty of critters that do that. It's most certainly annoying."

"So, did you make a mistake given the current information?"

"Not really, but that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty. Though it occurs to me there's not really any difference between what you said and what a shrink might say, and the only difference between you right now and a shrink is a degree. Oh, well." She pops open the door out of the recharge room and runs along the overhang. "So, any idea where we're supposed to go?"

In response we project a map out of our Ki, "Well, this room looks like a hub. If we go this way," we point at a lower room on the left wall, "It goes to the Data Room, and the security lock probably isn't next to the data room. The room above it probably isn't it for the same reason. This little room to the right probably isn't it because it's too accessible. Plus the blue security hatch wouldn't be guarding the blue lock, because there wouldn't be any way to get to it. So it can only b the one in front of us." We point at a hatch well in front of us. We copy some sort of red wallhugger that can stick to the walls, ceilings, and floors. (Stick to any surface, strong contact damage, no ranged attack.) Samus blasts several of them and we enter the nex chamber, blasting several more of them while climbing. Samus wordlessly points at the blue hatch blocking the suspected security room. We equally wordlessly point at the map, which indicates that the room extends upward, as does the current room. She nods and we continue upward. The top has a white hatch, which we shoot open. Samus jumps down in a somersault and lands on her feet. We float down in a sitting position, legs tucked under and right arm in between, shotgun muzzle first. We first used this flight position in battle, but later dubbed it "The Enemy's Gate is Down" after a similar technique from a novel we'd read. By the time we land, Samus has already unlocked the door by stepping on the platform in the middle of the room, activating the console. We open the blue door and continue out.

Hopping down towards the data room, we turn down a hall and to another room. We hop up a platform, onto an upper roof and blast some sort of flying creature. Down the hall we enter the Data Room. Samus steps into the chamber. When the energy field dissipates, she steps out, rolls into ball form and drops a small sphere about half a meter in diameter. It explodes after a second, propelling her upward. She unrolls.

"Doesn't that hurt?" We ask.

"Which part? The ball morph or the bomb?" she aasks in response.

"Both"

"Oh, the bomb simply doesn't bother me because it's just not strong enough to penetrate my armor. When I use the morph ball, I just curl into a ball and my suit creates a spherical energy field around me. So, how are you going to do your own bomb equivalent?"

"Just a simple telekinetic burst. Nothing fancy."

We step out of the data room and instantly hear a large explosion followed by loud footsteps. Samus gets it before we do, "The exit!" She runs down and shoots the exit door a few times before shaking her head, "It's gone. Though I did see a couple bomb tunnels that could be useful." She hops up the platforms and morphs, dropping a bomb. The bomb detonates, breaking a block. She rolls into the hole and comes out a minute later proceeded by an RU expansion, which flops to the ground unceremoniously. "Thought you might not want to go rolling through a tunnel you didn't have to, and I was already there."

We nod silently and load our sniper ammo, sending three beams of light into red wallhuggers. The three unlucky contestants derez with an angry sound. We take the chance to transform into ball form and take up station in front of the ball tunnel at the far end of the room. Our ball glows a white-green color before we release a small shockwave. The ball tunnel cover stays intact… But the floor under it doesn't. We crash into a small tunnel that's only one meter tall, but about three meters wide. We roll to the side just in time for Samus to plop down much more gracefully, if it's possible to be graceful in the form of a one meter sphere. We get the distinct impression she's smirking inside her helmet. We scan our surroundings using a combination of visual and ultrasonic sensors distributed around the surface of our sphere. We don't begin to wonder how Samus navigates without uploading her last meal. It almost makes us nauseous even without a stomach to feel nausea with. We roll down the tunnel, which seems to have a sort of s-curve just to be confusing. We drop over the edge and dodge one of the flying creatures, opening the nearest door before turning away upon seeing only a biometric transmission room. We blast two fliers and a wallhugger before opening the door at the end of the room. This one is much more interesting. We can see the entrance to some sort of ball maze. Above this is a ledge. Samus glances at it, and, presumably on a hunch, jumps onto a block, morphs, and bombs. A sort of pillar rises out of the ground. Samus crouches and shoots a block that appears cracked slightly and crawls through into a chamber. We follow, hearing the sound of a flier being blasted. She tries to jump up onto a ledge, but can't jump high enough.

"Let us," we say in a cocky tone, morphing and releasing telekinetic blasts until another pillar rises up. We jump onto the pillar, load the RU expansion at the top and toss a Missile Expansion to a waiting Samus. We quickly bomb and burst our way through the maze, letting Samus blast several wallhuggers and eventually falling to a lower chamber, into a side hall that leads down, and into another room. We feel it necessary to comment, "Wow, the place is really messed up. Look at those vines growing everywhere," referencing the vines growing over everything that doesn't move.

"Yeah," Samus responds, "It is impressive. Luckily the vines don't inhibit movement any." We follow her as she blasts a flier and a wallhugger before dropping onto some collapsing blocks. Samus charges a shot and does a somersault jump into some sort of sidehopper, shooting it at point-blank range. It derezes into an X and expels a spike that hits us in the back, seeing as we're dealing with a wallhugger on the ceiling. Upon hearing our yelp, Samus glances over, and seeing that we weren't damaged, grins and asks, "What, did I hurt you?" and blasts another wallhugger.

We rub our back with a disgruntled expression, right above the point where our swords cross, and suddenly mock a draw and lunge, snarling, "Don't test us," before we both explode into a gale of laughter.

"Okay," Samus says after a minute, taking her hands off her knees, "Humor break over, let's get back to the navigation room," She points at a door and we follow, jumping up two ledges and shooting a few enemies below the opposite side of the pillar. She shoots a few small jumping creatures and bombs out another of the metal pillars we love so much, crawling up onto another of the tall blue pillars in this utilitarian room. We strafe around another of the little dome jumpers before drawing our blades and going to work. In the next room, a tall vertical tower, we slice up another of the wallhuggers crawling along the ground. We hop up two platforms and down a small side shaft. It seems to be a mistake as it's too high to jump back out, having a step on the other side allowing us to climb it. Samus simply somersaults into the wall above. The door behind the pillar and kicks off, mounting the top of the pillar and jumping back down. We follow her in.

Samus zaps a sidehopper in the next room and a walllhugger in the room after that. Straight ahead she sends her biometrics to her ship for no particular reason and continues through. The next room has some sort of little spike ball that Samus simply hits with charge shots. We glance at them and decide to ignore them, as they probably have no useful abilities. The room after that has some wallhuggers and nothing else. Samus bombs out part of the ground and missiles a barrier X to death, absorbing the red X.

"Well, let's get this over with," we comment, shooting the door open and reloading our assault magazine. Samus runs through the door, already charging up a shot and we follow on her heels. The room has a small pillar in front of the door. Samus jumps it easily and drops off the other side. We hear an expulsion of air as she lands further down than expected. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, just surprised. Get down here."

The expected Core-X floats in the middle of the room, surrounded by smaller X. The collection rez into a tall blue creature. It has a stacked segmented body with a single large eye and four sensory tentacles at its head. Samus lowers her weapon and her helmet emits a soft oscillating buzz for a moment before she speaks up. "Zazabi. It attacks by jumping and floating down on its prey. Its weakness is that when it opens its mouth it opens a channel straight to its brain."

"How do you know this?"

"My helmet can scan enemies and other objects."

"Ah. Playtime!" We swap out our magazine for a sniper clip. Samus raises her weapon and shoots the Zazabi and it gives a slight yelp before turning her way. It starts to slide along the ground towards her, using its mouth as a foot. We start playing some music in our helmet to get in rhythm, a quirk of unknown origin. The creature jumps very high, arcing over Samus's head and landing with a splat on the other side. Samus stands still, waiting for it to come at her. It jumps a second time and stops, hovering right above her. Its mouth opens wide and it starts to fall. Samus rapidly alternates missiles and normal uncharged shots, causing four of the distinctive grunts of an X in pain. Samus throws herself out of the way as it comes crashing down. One of its segments explodes, covering Samus in plant guts. We throw our Disk at it, getting its attention, and, waiting for it to open itself up, yell at Samus "You look ridiculous!"

Samus grins and waits. The Zazabi opens up and we hit it with two of our solid-core sniper shots. A second segment explodes and Samus responds "So do you!"

"Yeah, we deserved that." We take out a third segment and Samus returns its focus to her. We take the opportunity to reload. Samus prepares to fire before we yell "Wait just a sec," charging forward, jumping, and grabbing one of the head tentacles, which are now right above head level.

 **Copy Form  
Name: Zazabi  
Type: Parasite: Wetware Semi-Sentient, Host: Wetware Non-Sentient  
Abilities: High jump, Vertical Float  
Strengths: Heavily armored, Feed on consumed enemies  
Weaknesses: Low contact damage, No ranged attack, Explosives can free prey, mouth leads directly to brain  
Known Morph Restrictions: Metroid universe  
Copy Complete  
Verification Complete**

It looks distinctly surprised when a full height Zazabi appears next to it for a second. It shakes itself and continues towards Samus, jumps, and eats about four missiles, derezing into a Core-X and a quickly absorbed cloud of regular X. We eject our sniper magazine and pick up a missile from Hammerspace, loading it in. Our shotgun opens into a cross and we fire at the X. It gives a yelp and bounces away from us, right towards Samus. Samus strafes out of the way and gives it a present from her charge shot. We hit it again, followed by Samus. While the core shielding is still up, it's moving slowly and clearly not going to survive much longer. We eject our latest missile and return our shotgun to its normal form, charging forwards and unloading both barrels at point blank range. The shield dissolves and Samus absorbs it, restoring her High Jump and Spring Ball abilities. She jumps up the high walls at the edge of the chamber and waits for us to catch up.

We pull our Disk off our back and activate subroutine control, projecting a hologram from the middle, adding a Gold level Y-Amp subroutine, allowing us to easily clear the same jumps. We go back one room and ask Samus, "What happened to the wallhuggers?" noting the lack o the annoying little things.

Samus curses and points at a chrysalis on the ceiling and anther on the wall, "Right there."

We follow her through the biometrics rom, through the next room, and into the room with a sidehoppper, which Samus blasts and neatly dodges the spike it fires. She runs up to the door and curses, seeing it destroyed by the SA-X. In frustration, she bombs the floor and falls down a hole. We laugh and follow… And immediately stop laughing, hearing footsteps below the floor. We shoot around Samus and bomb out the end floor, darting back so as to not fall down and unmprph so we're lying on our stomach. We pull a small camera on a hose out of Hammerspace and feed it down the gap, giving us an unmistakable view of the SA-X walking away. It opens the door on the end of the corridor and leaves. We return the Flexcam to Hammerspace and do a rather inelegant dive down the hole, landing smack on our face. Samus laughs and lands on our back before rolling off and unmorphing., clutching her knees. "That was priceless! I _really_ wish I could record video."

"You do know that we just saw the SA-X, right?"

"Yeah, I recognize my own footsteps," She gets serious again, "So, where'd you get the camera?"

"Playing _way_ too many spy games. They're often used to look under doors and such. Thought it would be useful to have, so we made one. Not really that hard either. It can't beat an X-ray scanner, but it's not a bad piece f kit. Our X-ray visuals are down and we haven't gotten around to repairing them after an incident a while back involving a backfiring EMP. Bit of an oversight that... Moving on?"

We run out of the corridor and into the vertical area that led to the door the SA-X destroyed for us. We use high jump to scale up and into a utilitarian room with a flier and a tropical room with a sidehopper. Down the ball tunnel at the top of the sidehpper room is the main room of the sector, across from the NBR trio. We follow Samus back to the Recharge Room to the Navigation Room.

"We've got trouble. Releasing the security lock may have been a bad idea, the SA-X has entered the water environment in Sector 4, abbreviated AQA, with several thousand X"

"How did it get there so fast?" We ask, "We saw it in Sector 2 not five minutes ago!" We interrupt, "And _only_ several thousand? This'll be easy!"

"…Okay, you done yet?" At our silence, "Right. Get o Sector 4. I'l brief you further when you arrive."

On the elevator, Samus turns to us, again with something on her mind, "The SA-X. Me at my strongest, but heartless. It's probably just a killing machine. I have to stop it before it realizes its potential."

"Then it's a good thing you've got us!" we say exuberantly, reaching up to slap her shoulder plate, before jerking ur hand back in surprise when we feel energy starting to drain from us.

"Well," Samus comments, "It seems I got more from the Metroid Vaccine than the ability to absorb X and vulnerability to cold. That's the Metroid's signature energy draining ability at work. It's why so many groups have tried to make them into bioweapons. The Space Pirates, the planet Phaze to an extent, the… Galactic Federation… Oh blast I hope they aren't trying that again. Don't tell the AI I suspect that, if I'm wrong no problem and if I'm right then it'll just alert HQ that I'm on to them." We nod in assent and follow her off the elevator and across to sector 4.

"This sector has taken heavy damage. I knew the X were destructive, but this almost makes me wonder if they're sentient somehow. But I digress. This sector houses a creature called Serris. It's fast, ultra-high speeds in fact."

"Sounds fun," Samus says, miming rubbing her hands together.

"It was most likely released by the SA-X, but I can't be certain, nor do I know why other than to cause destruction."

"Probably stretching its wings as it were, trying to see what it's capable of," we state.

"It's natural behavior is to periodically return to its breeding chamber. The X most likely haven't changed that. While we'd prefer you didn't, you are authorized to terminate it if you must. Be warned, some broken power nodes have electrified the water. We can't turn them off without risking affecting the entire station."

"Bit of a design flaw that is," we say.

"HQ agrees. Don't get in the water if you can avoid it." The AI signs off and we lead Samus out into the biometric rom.

"Oh, we're gonna get in the water all we want. We've been meaning to play with ur electrical powers."

"…Okay, you do that." Samus says, slightly confused.

 **And that's all for this chapter. Actually, I think it's the longest delay I've had. I've been drowning in homework for a nice chunk of the time, but that's only part f it. I'd like to blame s many things, but most of them only apply to at most a week. I'd put it at about 30% homework, 10% other things and 60% being due to my signature procrastination. Sorry, I'll try and pick up my rate.**

 **So… Next chapter I get to play with Composite's electrical powers. This'll be fun!**

 **Now all I need is a keyboard without a dodgy "o" key and it'll be perfect. I mostly have to push it harder than normal, but I can work with it for now.**

 **EDIT: I meant to upload this on Saturday (Dec 3, 2016,) In fact I had it uploaded and was editing when the real world spontaneously decided to put a 40 pound bag of goat dung in far too close proximity to a hurricane-force air movement device, so I've been putting out proverbial fires all week. Sorry about that.**

 **And please, leave some reviews! I really want to know what my readers think!**


	5. Chapter 5: Sector 4

**Chapter 5: Sector 4**

We step out of the Recharge Room and immediately cross two platforms and down a drop, through a utility corridor and into a large room, or so it seems. We immediately get excited upon sensing massive amounts of electricity right beneath our feet. Samus grunts and comments, "You may have electrical powers, but I for one don't. What sort of power do you have anyway?"

"Mostly absorb, aim, and release. Actually not so much absorb per say. We can use power from our internal supply, but we need external energy to catalyze our power. We've been meaning t play with it, but we haven't found the time."

We jump up two ledges, blast one of the water wallhuggers from Sector 1 that apparently doesn't depend on water and bomb out the top of a column, dropping a waterhugger on the other side t the floor. We eject a blaster rifle clip and drop down onto the waterhugger (moderate ranged and contact attacks, weak to most weapons) and give it two barrels of 12-gauge, reload the blaster and spray some more on a collection of cubes suspended by chains to the ceiling. Samus hits a few of them n the ceiling. We run down a slope on the flor, crouch, and dip our left hand into the crackling water. Electrical arcs start to flow up our arm and surround our body in a nimbus f energy before settling into a gauntlet of energy. Samus pens the next door and we hop from one platform to another, quickly catching up with her.

We give Samus a cocky grin and a "watch this!" before sending an electrical discharge at the nearest waterhgger. It jitters for a second and derezes. Samus shots three more and we hop up onto an overhang sealing ff a large pool of water. We spot a small brown fish in it. We will a spark from our gauntlet onto our finger and nonchalantly toss it into the water. With the amount of energy we absorbed, our electrical gauntlet hasn't changed appreciably, even without recharging it with our own energy supply. Samus jumps into the pool and opens the door inside it. We erect a telekinetic shield around our arm to protect it from the water, and to not electrocute Samus. We copy the form of it (Unrestricted movement in water, weak to most weapons) but elect not to use it yet, as this would lose our electrical buildup. Samus climbs a ladder on the opposite side of the continuation of the pool in this room and investigates a room to the side before returning and commenting "Biometric."

Across a small gap from the biometric room is a long corridor with some of the waterhuggers. We follow it down and up a large vertical shaft, through a morph tunnel and int a room near the target location. A large collapsed ceiling blocks ur path, though Samus grabs an energy tank. We re-enter the shaft and corridor rm and hear the waterhuggers reforming.

"Well," Samus starts, "That could be a problem. I don't have any weapons that can hit that little bugger right above our exit, and he'll inevitably shoot us while we're rolling through."

"You don't and we don't. The only weapon we have that could hit it is a Redeemer we picked up in a video game a while back, but that would take out us too… Wait, can't believe we forgot this…"

We hold out our hand and a collection of red data cubes begins to swirl above it, dropping down and forming a brown tripedal combat drone with a helmet-shaped turreted head and spindly legs with single joints. We send it a few commands and it transforms into a traditional flying saucer in a swirl of servos. It disappears, reappearing unseen to us n the other side of the wall. It floats upward, coming level with the waterhugger blocking our exit. The saucer, spinning on its axis, rotates its two runs into line and pens fire, spraying the target with energy pellets. The target derezes into an X which floats through ur wall, surprising Samus.

"What's that from?"

"That's the 'little bugger' blocking our exit."

"Think you can deal with the rest of them in the hall?"

We open a comlink with Samus, not knowing why we haven't already done so and send her a visual feed from the drone. The drone drops down, blasts another enemy on a ladder below the tunnel, drops down further and hits a target on the ceiling of the corridor below us. We recall it and dissolve it in a swirl of red energy before morphing and dropping down. We start to open fire on the last waterhugger before deciding to do something different. Bolts of power flow down our arm, arcing between our splayed fingers before being pushed out into forks of lightning that obliterate the last watterhugger. Not even the X survives. Samus starts before commenting, "One down, so many more to go." The attack has, however, drained a noticeable amount of power from our gauntlet. We make a mental note to recharge as soon as we can. That opportunity comes pretty quickly as we drop into the water, through the door, up over a few ledges, and through a lower door, coming out right on top of more electrified water.

Samus jumps up into the ceiling space and bombs out part of it, revealing a horizontal ladder, crosses over the water, and we pulse out a small tower. We lead Samus up a large vertical room and into one of the biometric rooms, where Samus transmits and starts to wonder where to go next. We shrug and point out that there's no way to the terget.

"Search the wall," Samus orders. We glance around and spot a cracked patch. We morph into ball form and use a telekinetic burst to open it. Samus nods and we roll through, burst out a blockage, and through another door.

The next room appears to be Serris's breeding chamber. We hop up onto the rim of the tank and look down.

"Well… crap," we comment, seeing the gutted skeleton, "The X got it.."

"Thank you for telling me what I can figure out on my own," Samusus responds, "Now how's about we go about FIXING THE PROBLEM?"

"Well, if you're going to be like that..."

"Sorry, I'm getting a bit tired." Samus changes to a more lighthearted tone, "These missions really take it out of a girl."

"If you need any sleep, we'll be happy to stand guard. After we kill Serris of course."

"Right, I'll hold you to that," Samus jumps out of the tank on the far side and goes through a door. She climbs up some rubble, up two ladders, and down a hole. We follow her and land just in time to watch her finish off a door guard. We open the door and enter a large room. Half of the room is submerged, there's a ladder on the oppposite side, and there's a large walkway above us at the waterline. We hop up onto a ledge right above the door and note a locked door across the room. We release the telekinetic seal around the electricity still hanging onto our arm, which has been swirling around our ball form. We haven't lost it because our ball form technically has all the powers our base form does.

Samus walks out onto the middle of the walkway, glancing from side to side in anticipation of a fight. The room quakes and the water sloshes before most of the walkway collapses. A large wormlike creature jumps out of the water with a screech, moving at supersonic speeds. Samus leaps out of its way, instantly charging and firing her beam at it. The beam bounces.

"Samus, whatever you do, stay out of the water," we yell. The creature slows down to subsonic and plunges back down. We let our energy swirl around us in a nimbus of power, waiting. We hear the gurgle of the creature preparing to jump and make our attack. Electrical energy swirls around us in a cyclone of pure power, arcs jumping between different parts of the cloud and our own form. It explodes up and out in a dome of harsh yellowish light, tendrels connecting it to us. We raise our arms over our head and spread them down towards our sides, separating the dome into a form that is half-disk half-ring. We slam our hands down, sending every joule of electricity we have, and plenty that we really shouldn't spare plunging into the water, instantly electrocuting Seeris.

Seeris releases a bonechilling scream before its bodyless head lunges out of the water, rapidly derezing into a Core-X. We collapse onto the walkway, badly depleted, sort of crawling towards the water, a good source of energy for us. Samus covers us by distracting the Core-X by destroying its shell and absorbing it and yelling something about a Speed Booster. We derez our visor and shove our fox-like muzzle into the water, rapidly absorbing its energy into our own system. We stand up unsteadily, but rapidly gain strength, shaking our head to get the water off of our fur. _How can we get wet if our fur is a dataform?_

"Okay, that was cool," Samus says, "I gotta admit, you've got some power."

"Didn't know… we had that… in us," we pant, rapidly recovering, "We've never tried anything with that much power. To be honest, we mostly fight on instinct, not much technique. We just do whatever comes into our head."

Samus shakes her head, "You shouldn't do that. Lack of proper technique is going to get you killed at some point."

"We know, we're working on that. Now let's see if you can do anything about that water. Let's try the room next to that vertical shaft."

Samus leads us to the vertical shaft leading to Seeris's breeding chamber and through an unexplored door, picking up a missile expansion on the way, We take the opportunity to recharge our electricity while passing over one of the large patches of electrified water. Samus runs towards a wall and surges forward, breaking the sound barrier. We follow her, hovering an inch off the ground, making a rapid skating motion and traveling just as fast as she is. We blast through the wall and stop in front of pumping controls. Samus lowers the water level quickly. We dive down a hole and retrieve an RU expansion for us, not that running out of RUs has ever really been an issue, and Samus gets a missile expansion. We race back to the Navigation room, crashing through several walls in the process.

"So Seeris was infected by the X," the AI starts, "But you did recover another ability. At this rate, you may be able to face the SA-X. But htat's a little way off. HQ has sent me data for a missile upgrade, but you'll need to find another data room to get it, as the last one has been destroyed. It's almost as if the X are deliberately preventing you from becoming more powerful. Your best bet is Sector 3. I'll brief you when you arrive."

"Computer, maybe you don't know much about humans, but I need sleep. I'll get to it in about four hours." She signs off abruptly, not giving the computer time to object, "Composite, don't you need to sleep too?"

"No, we only need to rest for one in 24 cycles, and we can save it up. We slept for a full weekend straight from 20:00 Friday to 08:00 Monday, we're good for the next month and a half."

"Lucky," Samus grunts, getting herself comfortable agianst a door, not even bothering to remove her suit.

 **Time Cut**

About three and a half hours later, a call comes in for us on our Ki. It's Camanion.

"Happy Birthday sis!" she says excitedly.

"Happy… What?" we ask, dumbfounded.

"Birthday, I wrote a program that allows me to check how long objective time it's been between my dimension and Fcon's, you know, the corporation that made you as part of a world domination scheme? Well, it's been exactly one year sine you came online. Give or take a few hours anyway."

"Yes… we remember Fcon. And you didn't just check some timestamps?"

"Nope," she deadpans.

 **Flashback: POV: Third: Place: Camanion's home: Time: One week ago**

Camanion sits at her workstation at home, typing away. Her tail waves idly as she rapidly types on the keyboard. She suddenly jumps slightly and yells out, "Hey Risa, come check this out!"

Risa wanders over with a screwdriver and a disgruntled expression, "Yes?" she asks in an acidic tone, "I was fixing one of your servers. Seriously, how unreliable can your hardware be?"

"Well, I'm sliced into Fcon's network and I find this..." Camanion prints out a file listing on her terminal window, "This is the memo Dr. Lightfoot sent to the CEO to report Composite's escape. Se the timestamp?"

"Yes, I see it."

"And this is the timestamp of a log file the system just edited. They're almost exactly one year apart!"

"And we need to give Composite something for their first birthday eh?"

"I was thinking an open invitation to come pick up the portable PDA, the file's a little big to email."

"Something like that."

 **End Flashback**

"Totally," we respond, not believing her for a second.

"Well, I've got a little gift. It's a little big to send to you though. If you get the means and the time, come pick it up!"

"We'll make a note. Say, you ever heard of BSL? It's a space station orbiting planet SR388."

"Huh. Never heard of it."

Samus starts to stir, and we think we hear the beeping of an alarm, "Well, Samus's waking up, we've got to go. Talk to you soon sis."

"Same to you!"

"Who was that?" Samus asks, instantly alert.

"Our sister. Apparently she did the math and we're exactly one objective year in our home dimension."

"Good for you, happy birthday. Now how about we go shoot something?"

"We like the way you think!"

 **And that's sector 4. Yes, Composite is one year old. I did elease the first chapter of their first adventure on New Year's Eve 2015. Or was it New Year's Day, 2016 around midnight? Can't remember, don't really care.**

 **Anyway, I'll see you next chapter! Until then, this is SabaraOne, logging out.**


	6. Chapter 6: Secotr 3

**Chapter 6: Sector 3**

"...So get to the Data Room in this sector. It's guarded by a level two hatch though. You'll need to find another security room. As you know, I c.-"

"Can't tell us where it is, and there's dangerous critters in this sector, and be on your guard, and since it's a tropical sector, we can assume we'll find some superheated rooms. Have we missed anything?" The AI's only response is to emit what sounds suspiciously like a huff of annoyance and disconnect.

"Well, you seem to have annoyed it." Samus says.

"It was taking too long with all the extra detail."

"So, where's the data room, Ms. Security Expert?"

"We're not a bloody female," we answer in a slightly mock whiney voice, "And to answer your question," we open the map on our Ki, "It's probably somewhere down one of these two side corridors," we point at a pair of halls directly below us.

"Why do you say that?" Samus asks.

"Not sure, call it intuition." _We knew we should have done more research before coming here_.

We leave the Recharge room and into a large hub room. We dart along and explore much of it, though some seems too far to jump, and we don't want to go somewhere Samus can't.

"Yeh Composite," Samus asks from the bottom of the room, "There's only one door here, didn't you say there were two?"

"Fake floor probably," We're currently stuck to a wall, glancing around a corner to ensure there aren't any X creatures wandering around. Strangely, there aren't any in the entire hub room. Samus shoots at the floor a few times, revealing a gap with another door below it. We join her on the fake floor and shoot open the door above the floor. A wave of heat blasts out, causing Samus to flinch and our data shell to visibly ripple. Both of us dive down the hole, getting below the heat and dropping the temperature from scalding to mildly uncomfortable.

"Ow..." Samus complains, wiping the condensation off her visor.

"Yeah," we confirm, briefly swirling into our True Form before reforming, regaining our physical integrity, "Hopefully the security room isn't in that." A green-white barrier flickers around us and we float upward into the stream, "This helps, but we probably can't share it."

"Well, let's make a note to avoid that room in the future, eh?"

"Sure, now, what about this room…" We step into the lower corridor, which isn't especially hot.

The map reports it's a long room, but we can only find a small drops a bomb at the foot of the wall, and it explodes, revealing the by-now familiar Speed Booster icon.

"So, we have to get up some speed," we note, "Or maybe…" We step so that our back is to the door. Samus, not sure what we're about to do, quietly rolls to the side. We pull our hands to our chest, glowing with energy, and push forward, sending it blasting forward at supersonic speed. A chunk of wall dissolves under the assault, but quickly reforms. "Okay, Plan B, assuming you aren't too keen on riding the wave in."

Samus's only response is a how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am look before she leaves back to the hub. She shoots one of the chunks of raised floor and it dissolves, revealing a non-raised floor underneath. She runs to the far end of the hub room before blazing back in on a wave of thrusters fast enough to leave afterimages. Her shoulder slams into the wall and she spears through. We boost after her on a wave of telekinesis, feet not touching the ground. We both land slightly lower than the chamber we just left. A few bumps with ramps rise from the floor, and the hatch on the far side is locked, but aside from that, it's just longer. A bit of ceiling lowers well before the hatch. We walk up to it and reach our hand up, feeling microscopic cracks in the lowered ceiling.

"Hey Samus, this ceiling's damaged, we report.

Samus simply responds "Get clear!" We dive to the side just in time to dodge her high-speed jump, smashing cleanly through the ceiling and into the security chamber. We hear a click and the hatch unlocks. We hear the sound of X forming into host copies and whirl around, already arming our weapons. With a screech, a giant parrot-like creature attempts to dive-bomb us, but bounces off the ceiling. Taking nothing for granted and expecting it to take that into account next time, we dart out from under the overhang and into the open, giving us more area to jump. This turns out to be a mistake as two more notice us from the other side of the room and give chase. We grab out Disk and throw it, cleanly slicing one in half. Samus, emerging from the security room, shoots two Missiles, eliminating both of the survivors.

"So, hatches are open, let's go find us a data room." She rushes through the wall back into the hub and we follow, outpacing her. We surge into the room across the hub and pull up short, stopping less than an inch from a shutter gate. We glance around and note the fact that there's no switch on this side. Samus jumps up the wall behind us before yelping and diving back down just in time to dodge a fireball. She tries again, this time going into morph ball mid jump and cleanly dodges the shot. We hop up and peek over the platform she's on, seeing some sort of green crocodile-like creature embedded in the wall. It sees us at the same time and spits out a third fireball, which goes well over our head. The shot doesn't make us drop to the floor with a thump, but the gate suddenly opening does.

"Surprised?" Samus asks. She points up at the ceiling of the platform we just fell from, "It collapsed under me when I got to the wall, and I saw the switch. Didn't expect you to be up there though." She races through the door, boosting through some sort of sidehopper and using missiles on a duo of parrots.

The floor collapses under Samus's high-speed dash. We join her. Or try to anyway, we don't step out far enough and a lower bit of floor collapses, sending us crashing down into a lower chamber. We open the door at the far side and with a high economy of motion dodge Samus's attempted tackle.

"Hmm, need to work on that eh?" we ask. Samus stands, spitting out something that sounds obscene and walks out the door, already firing two missiles into the wall-croc thing that rezes on the other side. We follow up the ladders in a long vertical shaft before entering a room with a pretty messed up back wall. We step forward and place our hand into the wall, sending a telekinetic pulse.

"Okay, it looks like we have one tunnel down here," we point at the bottom of the wall, "And one in the middle. Which one?"

"Middle. If I know how it's set up, that bottom one will dump us…" She glances into her visor for a moment, probably checking the map, "Into that room behind the gate. The one you fell through."

We morph into our ball form, bounce up, and release a telekinetic burst before rolling in and collecting an RU expansion in the middle of the tunnel. Samus collects the Missile Expansion next to it. We burst out part of the top and jump up, hearing another sidehopper above us. Samus rolls forward to a weak part of the ceiling of our current tunnel and bombs it out. She jumps up, unmorphing in mid-air and firing a missile towrads the sidehopper. A blue barrier X blocks the shot. The sidehopper can't get through it either.

"Guess it's a good thing we came this way," we comment, noting on the map that we could have come from a different direction that would have us blocked by this barrier, which Samus's missiles can't scratch.

"Guess so," Samus agrees with a nod, before walking through the door opposite the barrier and into another room. The heat is noticeably cooler in here, though it's still pretty oppressive. Not so much that we'd have trouble, but certainly enough to make us be a little more careful. The door to the data room stands closed, perfectly intact. Samus walks in, and comes out a minute later. While she's in, we hear a massive explosion in front of us. Samus is running, arm cannon already open and ready to fire missiles. "What happened?"

"Unknown. Came from that direction," we point in the direction we came from. All the enemies in the last room are gone, which is odd because they usually come back quickly. What there is, however, is a large hole in the floor. Samus jumps down, and we follow her into a bio metric room, then a recharge room. We almost expect to find a navigation room, but instead find a dead end room with a sidehopper on the floor, a sort of sidehopper on the ceiling, and a barrier in the corner. Samus solves this problem with three of her newly upgraded missiles and collects an expansion behind the barrier. We return to the all above these new rooms, and wander towrads the hub to find that the SA-X has destroyed the door.

At the same time we discover this, an awful crashing sound starts coming from the direction of the data room. By unspoken agreement, the two of us stack up at the door leading to the next room, Samus on the left and us on the right. Samus shoots the door and blindly fires a missile towards the Data Room. At the same time, we pop an anti-armor grenade into our weapon and fire it equally blindly fire towards the noise, "Flashbangs," we complain, "Need to get some flashbangs."

"Wouldn't do any good," Samus answers, diving into the room and dodging an enraged security robot. It appears to be a blue ring shape that runs on small stubby feet. We fire another grenade at it, which doesn't even get its attention, let alone damage it. Samus jumps up to a sort of circular ladder on the ceiling and starts to crawl hand-over-hand over top of it. She suddenly aims down, hanging by one arm, fires multiple missiles into the center of it. "It's got a yellow-orange hub in the center. That's its weak point." The robot collapses in on itself, its circumference shrinking noticeably and a gray turret popping out of the top. A bomb shoots out nd it reverts to normal. Samus frantically climbs away from it and we dart away. The bomb explodes, releasing a circle of flame. It shoots up to the ceiling, dips down to knee height after a second, and flares back up after another second. We jump over it when it dies down, and Samus takes the same opportunity to climb over it and fire a few more Missiles into the robot's weak spot. We jump up and give it a few grenades of our own. It makes a loud noise and surges under us, throwing another bomb. We judge that we won't even need to move to dodge and feed it more ammunition. Samus, in the same situation, fires missiles down on it too. After a few more rounds of this, we note that the top is badly damaged, revealing what looks a lot like a weware brain.

A few more missiles and grenades later, the robot, giving a high-pitched screech and grinding sound, staggers out from under the ladders towards the Data Room and leaps up through the ceiling, bringing part of it crashing down. We drop down to the floor, run over, and climb the rubble, popping into another chamber containing a few sidehoppers and parrots. The two of us make short work of them and continue through a few morph tunnels before dropping into the upper part of the hub and making our way back to the navigation room, pausing only to kill a few parrots.

"I see that you encountered a rogue security robot. If you encounter it again, you are authorized to terminate it. Your security is vital Samus. But as to your brief… Security Level 2 Hatches are open, so Sectors 5 and 6 are open. It is likely that the X are already in these sectors. They are much harder to stop than we thought. Sector 5 is sub-zero, you can't go there yet Samus, a side effect of the Metroid Vaccine. HQ are working on Varia Suit data. You'll have to go to sector 6, the nocturnal habitat, to download it. The X have destroyed all the Data Rooms you've already used. I no longer doubt they have intelligence. Go to Sector 6 and await further orders."

We hurry to the elevator and get moving.

Meanwhile, in a navigation room…

The screen goes blue, and a comms window activates.

"Does Samus suspect anything?" an unknown party asks.

"No, I do not think so," answers the ship.

"Good, monitor her closely," the caller responds.

"Affirmative. Out." The call disconnects.


	7. Chapter 7: Sectors 6 and 5

**I merged these two because I realized that they were both _really_ short. I also finished it a while back and simply forgot to upload it.**

 **Chapter 7: Sector 6 and 5**

"HQ has the Varia Suit data ready to download. Get to the data room here." The map scrolled, pointing out the target location, "But there's a problem. X from the Sub Zero sector are in this sector. They seem to have mutated. If you absorb one, you'll be frozen from within. This is probably a deliberate tactic. You should be able to stun them with your beam, and you'll be able to absorb them safely once you have the Varia suit. Be careful Samus."

Samus stretches, having wisely used the several hours sleeping. She hopped up and ran out of the room, weapon charging. As soon as we left the Recharge Room, we encountered a collection of small insect-like creatures. We draw our Disk and throw, hitting about two thirds of them and allowing Samus to quickly and efficiently finish off the last few. Samus's suit emits a glow. Our visor changes from transparent red to green. Colors become washed out and fine details become fuzzy, but our vision becomes much brighter. We cross the room once the insects are gone and go down and back up through a vertical room. The next room is wide open, but a large X floats in the center.

"There's one of them," Samus growls, she leaps up and shoots it. It stops its idle figure-eight pattern, twitching. We run below it and rapidly enter the next room. Another presumably blue X waits across from us. Samus morphs and drops some bombs on the platform, which hangs out over a long drop. The floor collapses, dropping her down outside of its detection range. We follow, spotting two doors that Samus opens and quickly closes, seeing the numbers of blue X in the area. Below a few more platforms is a room that doesn't seem to have any of them. Samus shoots a few destructible blocks, revealing that the bottom hid a blue X. Before she can react, the bX slams into her and is absorbed. Samus's immediate reaction is a bloodchilling scream of pain. She collapses to the ground, shuddering with cold.

We break a few branches off of a nearby bush and telekinetically use them to start a small fire for warmth. Several minutes later, Samus stoops shivering and raises her head, opening her eyes. "I… I'm not dead?" She asks in a weak, quivering voice, "And where did this fire come from?"

A slightly glowing branch plops onto the flames from the darkness. We step into the firelight. "That was us. You barely survived the X. We'll, both of us, have to be more careful."

A slight laugh, "You're telling me. I'm the one who almost died," She holds out a slightly quivering hand and we help her up. "I'll be okay in a few minutes. Thanks for the fire, that was good thinking." Her voice rapidly regains its strength. A few minutes later, she raises her arm into firing position, "Okay, let's go!"

We use telekinesis to pull the oxygen from the fire and dump the contents of a sandbag we digitized while Samus was out before moving on. "Fire safety is good," we add in a deadpan voice. Samus grunts and jumps down a ladder, destroying a loose wall panel to reveal a gap she can easily climb through. We peak over the edge of the platform and spot a few blue X, deciding that staying up is a good idea. Samus stuns a blue X over a pair of ladders and drops down, escaping into the next room. A few more X hover hear the ceiling, but they're too high to see her and move before she's past them. To buy time, she fires unaimed shots at them, hitting two of them. She crashes through a wall, us just behind, and bounces onto a latter. She lets go, landing on the ground and surging forward once again, blue X in hot pursuit. The two of us race into the next room, slamming the door just in front of them. Samus collects an energy tank and bombs part of the floor.

We follow her down and roll into another room. Samus rolls up to a wall, clearly debating weather or not to bomb it. The sound of approaching footsteps solves that dilemma quickly. We roll next to her and she detonates a bomb, dropping both of us into a sort of grate. We listen as the SA-X walks toward the wall we were just considering. We hear it morph, followed by the sound of some sort of countdown. Samus mutters an especially vile Chozo curse and shoots away from the sound at top speed. A massive detonation is heard, and a wave of energy explodes outward, barely missing us. We roll slightly out of cover, watching the SA-X walk past the now-destroyed wall.

"And that, we suppose, is what you call a Power Bomb?" We ask Samus.

"Yes. Normally I'm fine but this suit isn't thick enough to be undamaged. I'll be fine once I get the Varia upgrade."

The SA-X finishes its walk down the hall, down a ledge of some sort, and we hear it leave the area below. Samus rolls out behind us and we follow the SA-X, but not too fast. We travel through a room with a few assorted bugs, and into another habitat room. Samus shoots out part of the floor, drops down and prepares to shoot again.

"NO!" Samus whips around and sees our orange-glowing visor, "There's a blue X hiding in there. Shoot exactly there," We gesture at a specific block, "And you should be able to avoid all of them."

"How can you know this?"

"The Blue X are much lower than the ambient temperature. They show up on infrared just fine. Not as well as something hot, but pretty close."

Samus follows our instructions exactly and safely navigates to a door. A few more insects later, we make it to a door guard. Samus kills it with one missile and we enter the data room.

A Core-X, a big one, downloads the Varia Suit data as soon as we enter, destroying the terminal and floating out of the room. Samus fires missiles at it to no effect. We shoot forward and bury our blades in it, but to equal effect. Once the X escapes, we step to the damaged terminal and look at it. "There's no fixing this. _Maybe_ Sis could do it, but there's nothing we can do."

Samus sighs and walks out of the room into a large platforms hang over a large water pool, the middle two slightly lower. We follow. As soon as Samus steps onto the third platform, the Core-X, now larger, yellow, and with smaller yellow Core-X surrounding it, phases through the opposite wall and tries to ram Samus. Samus dodges out of the way and shoots a missile towards it. The missile simply bounces off. Samus tries a different tactic, shooting one of the smaller orbiting X with a charge shot. The X groans and disappears. We draw our Disk and send it bouncing around, killing a few more of the small X and damaging the big one. Once we figure out how to hurt it, the battle becomes easy but annoying. Dodge, fire charge shot or throw disk, rinse and repeat. Once all the smaller X are destroyed and the big one is badly damaged, it reverts to a normal Core-X, which Samus easily dispatches with missiles. She absorbs the X and drops to the ground. A massive energy discharge happens, causing her suit to dramatically change. Most of the blue has changed to yellow, and the red parts changed to purple. We nodded simply and darted off to the side opposite of the data room, through another room, and into a vertical chamber. As Samus climbed the ladder, several blue X played kamikaze pilot with her, only to be absorbed to no effect. The one at the top of the room got smart and tried to run, but Samus shot it and absorbed the stunned creature.

"Nice," we comment, "Resistant to cold now." Samus leads us through a few more rooms and quickly back to the navigation room.

"Good, you have the Varia function restored. You will be able to survive cold environments. However, you're no nearer being able to fight the SA-X. A Plasma Beam might work, but I can't make HQ work any faster. They do, however, have an Ice Missile upgrade for you in Sector 5, as your cellular makeup would reject the Ice Beam. Go to Sector 5, I'll brief there."

* * *

"HQ has Ice Missiles ready for you. The data room is here. It is and get the Ice Missiles." The AI signs off and we open our map, scowling at the sparse information.

"We're not sure, maybe it's somewhere down here?"

"I know less than you on the subject. But it's a starting point." Samus steps out of the recharge room. A blast of cold hits us, causing us to flinch in surprise. We blast a yellow wallhugger from the aquatic sector. Samus climbs the ladder across from its alcove in the wall, randomly firing until she locates a missile block and destroys it. The two of us flop into a room with a large glass backing. We grimace.

"Now, _that's_ not a security hazard at all."

"Samus nods in agreement and blasts some sort of creature that jumps into the air and floats down, firing energy bolts straight down. It poses no threat. We drop down, and then go back up after going under a hanging wall and through another door. The metal flooring is now caked in ice. Some sort of fliers that simply float dumbly around. Samus barely acknowledges their existence. A blue X runs away before Samus can shoot it. "This is too easy," we comment.

"Yes, that's what's got me worried," Samus responds, "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

We hit the bottom of the room, but both the map and the thin floor say it's not. We touch it and feel the familiar cracks of a speed block. Samus yells at us to get clear, racing out of an connecting room she'd noticed and breaking the booster blocks. The path lead to a door we couldn't open and a block Samus bombed out, revealing another door that we could. A group of floaters bounced around in a sealed section of the chamber. We couldn't see them, but we could certainly hear them. We didn't bother with fighting them, we just went around the compartment and continued on.

We shot out part of the floor of the next room and dropped in front of a green quivering lump on the floor. "What are these?"

"Not sure, They aren't dangerous unless you shoot them though," Samus responded.

We ignored it and continued along, jumping past two of them and into the security room. Samus unlocked the yellow hatches and we continued on into an especially frustrating room filled with gold wallhuggers and collapsing blocks. Samus opened a gate in the next room, and we charged into the room next to the data room's anti-chamber, which included a gate to make things interesting.

In the data room, Samus entered the chamber and came out a moment later, firing a missile that left a blue trail and a patch of ice on the wall. We left the room and fell down a shaft with a few brown enemies floating around horizontally. Samus grimaced and skillfully dodged them, rolling into a somersault. We entered the room with the pulsating mass just in time to see it be turned into a taller mass that pulsated with a dangerous sound and generally a more dangerous appearance. We growled and fired at it to no effect. Samus fired an ice missile at it, freezing it instantly. We jumped up it and opened the floor above it, climbing into a room with one of the small masses between two high platforms. Samus shot a gold wallhugger on the ceiling and destroyed it again when it reformed. Samus then fired a missile at the mass when it absorbed the wallhugger X and grew. We blazed over its frozen form and through the door on the other side, smashing through a speed wall, jumping up, and entering the room before the data room. We jumped up the assorted platforms and through a few more rooms.

Samus blasted a large ceiling-hugging creature with an ice missile, but it didn't freeze. Samus muttered a curse and fired at it again. It derezed into a pair of X. As soon as we entered this room and immediately a siren went off.

"Emergency In Sector 3" A feminine voice announced calmly. We growled out a stream of Mandalorian profanity and shot up to the Navigaiton room…


	8. Chapter 8: Secotr 3 Revisited

**Two chapters? Well, as I mentioned earlier, I finished the last one a while back and I finished this one yesterday. I'm already partway done with the next one, I apparently found a lot of inspiration very quickly. I can't explain it because even I don't fully understand the cause. I've got some ideas, but I'll keep those to myself. Not to mention a lot of enteresting stuff stops happening in this chapter and it becomes a glorified fetch quest, albeit one with good puzzles.**

 **Chapter 8: Sector 3 Revisited**

"The boiler in Sector 3 is overheating. The cooling unit is offline. You have six minutes before it explodes and destroys the station."

"How can the AI be so calm?" we ask Samus.

"Don't as, RUN!"

We charge up the elevator of Sector 5, down the hall, and into Sector 3.

" _Ke nari ivin'yc, shuk'yc!"_ We shout at the elevator, which isn't moving any faster than usual. Not surprising.

"What's that mean?" Samus asks while its still moving.

"Move vaster, useless."

"Makes sense, RUN!"

Not even the X creatures have decided to leave. If anything they're more determined to kill us. We run through a series of halls, almost on instinct, barely checking the map and using rooms we've never been in before. Samus opens a door and a blast of heat emerges. We immediately throw up a shield around ourselves to prevent damage. Samus runs through a few more rooms, dodging crocodile wallhuggers, parrots, and fireballs that shoot out of the lava below us. Eventually ew make it to the boiler room, which oddly sin't warm at all. We dispel our shield and drop into the control room. A scientist stands, pressing buttons on the colsole, raising the temperature faster.

"What are you doing?!" Samus shouts, "Are you insane?" When the scientist doesn't respond, she fires a missile at him. He grunts like an X and dissolves into a shielded Core X. We remember how to kill this type, waiting for it to open its ehey while dodging its attempts to ram us. It opens its eye and fires a large bolt of energy. We dive out of the way, but Samus seems to be almost panicked. "Composite!" The shot hits the wall behind us and explodes.

Pain. That's the first thing we notice when we come to. We must have only been out for a few seconds, since Samus is still battling the Super Core-X. Sparks of energy flicker at the edge of our vision as we regain our feet. The Super Core-X turns towards us, opening its eye. We growl a curse and fire an anti-armor round right into its face. _"Sooran, shab!_ Suck on that!"

The Core-X dissolves and Samus absorbs the remains. We race up to the console and place our hand on it, sending probes of energy into the network. "Come on, come on, where is it? Okay, and… SCRAM!" We set a bit in the system. The cooling modules come online with a _whoosh_ and the boiler slams into an emergency shutdown.

Samus test-fires her new beam. It fired a ring of energy as tall as she is. She charges it and fires a ball of energy that explodes on impact, "Good, it looks like a hybrid of Spazer and Diffusion. Very useful. Why did you scram it instead of just turning on the cooler?"

"The AI's estimate was a little off. Just turning on the coolers wouldn't have saved the station," We start to flip switches, bringing the boiler back online safely, "Now, let's go report in..."

* * *

"Odd. The X could have destroyed the station, and all X on-board. Maybe they thought you're a danger to X elsewhere. Either way, I detect life signs on the habitation deck. I've restored power to the main lift, go find these survivors."

We hurry up to main deck, following the map to the designated location. We have to use some of the crocodile wallhuggers as platforms on the way up with Samus's Ice Missiles.

Samus looks through the window of the habitation deck. "I think I know these, but I'd have to be certain. How do we get past this gate?"

"Not sure, there isn't a button on this side. Let's try dropping down," We burst out a block of the floor and fall down to the second of three levels. We place our hand on the wall and release a pulse of telekinetic energy. "Okay… this block can be destroyed with bombs, we think there's a tunnel linking the first and third 's a block beyond this chunk here that requires boosti – Hey!" Samus speeds past us, already guessing and crashing through the speed block in question. She drops to the first floor and enters the tunnel. We follow her and climb the tunnel using crocodiles as platforms some more. She steps onto the console on the third floor, opening the habitation deck and the gate.

"Etecoons and Dachoras," Samus muses as we go down the elevator, "I've met these people before. I hope they're safe. I wonder how they got here..."

"So the survivors weren't human… most unfortunate," The AI beings, We bristle at the comment, but the AI ignores us. "We can now confirm the death of all crew members… I hoped it wasn't so, but I've got proof now. The X probably only infected the crew for knowledge, they're too weak for battle. Samus, go to Sector 5, Power Bombs are ready."

"Good," Samus responds with… is that a hint of excitement?

"You sound happy," we comment once the AI disocnnects and we're heading to the elevator.

"Power Bombs? I've been looking forward to getting these back."

We quickly head back to the arctic sector…

* * *

We're running through a room in Sector 5 when a loud whooshing sound and shadow pass by the glass back.

"What's that?" We ask Samus.

"No idea… No, it can't be! Stay alert, if that's what I think it is we're going to have trouble if we meet it."

We get to the data room without incident and Samus downloaded the Power Bomb data. We leave the Data Room and fall down the vertical shaft. We re-enter the room with the first pulsating blob… and it's gone.

 **Repair complete: All visual filters online**

"Oh, good, so that's ready," we comment.

"What's ready?" Samus asks.

"Our X-Ray and EM sensors are online," Our visor turns gray and we look around, "And that looks like a Power Bomb symbol. Think you could do something about that?" We throw up our heat shield and Samus drops a bomb on the floor above the location we indicate. The bomb clicks down from three and releases a massive shockwave. The block identified is destroyed.

"Impressive," we comment, "Quite impressive."

The two of us fall down the hole and go through another door… and vault over a divider just in time to avoid being spotted by the SA-X. Samus prepares to drop a power bomb to destroy the wall across from the divider.

"No!" we hiss, "That divider is made entirely of power bomb blocks, it'll see us, let us try," We pop up and bomb out a block our visor indicates is weakened. We quietly roll through and out a door on the other side. The SA-X doesn't hear us. We travel through another chamber, Samus using a Power Bomb to both destroy the floor of the top half of the chamber and reveal a Power Bomb tank. A few rooms later Samus used a Power Bomb to destroy a large green Barrier X, but the return to the navigation room was otherwise uneventful.

"Samus, return to your ship immediately. I have important information." The AI prompts as soon as we connect and signs off.

"That was abrupt," we comment.

"Yes, we'd better follow its orders," Samus confirms, "In my experience, when officers don't explain themselves, they're either doing something illegal or there's no time to explain."

We race to the main deck elevator… and the power goes out. Our visor flashes to green and Samus's helmet begins to glow.

Samus says what we're both thinking, "This… could be a problem."


	9. Chapter 9: The Outage

**Chapter 9: The Outage**

We traveled through a series of maintenance pipes and bashed through a storage room before arriving at Samus's ship. Along the way, we enter a cold storage room. The body of some sort of dragon-like creature sits in the middle.

"Ridley," Samus snarls, "What's he doing here?"

"Something against him?" We ask.

"Try 'he killed my parents.' Personally."

"Wow… we can see why you hate him." Suddenly, Ridley's body shakes and seems to collapse. A Core-X floats out. Samus fails to attack it before it escapes and we continue to the ship.

"The main reactor silo is offline. Hatches, recharge rooms, biometric rooms, and elevators are offline. You can get to the auxiliary silo here," The map scrolled to an empty spot on the map surrounded by more empty space, "and that'll reactivate biometric and recharge rooms. But the information I summoned you for. The ship has been invaded by these creatures," a camera view of the berthing space occupied by familiar creatures from the Habitation deck, "They came up clean, so I let them into the spare rooms, do you know them?"

"Yes," Samus responds, "They were on the habitation deck. I can also hear them behind me."

"Good. Get that silo online." The hatch lowered and we exit Samus's ship. We transmit an order to launch to our ship, and the Cobra turns and launches from the docking bay.

"Why'd you do that?" Samus asks.

"Because if any trouble shows up it's not smart enough to defend itself. Or to launch on its own."

We start back towards the shaft up to the main deck from the docking bay. An insectoid creature hops on one of the platforms above us.

"Kihunter," Samus spits. She drops a Power Bomb, both destroying it and inadvertently opening a hole in the wall. We exchange looks, shrug, and enter. We travel through a series of maintenance crawlways and enter a large room with a large cylinder in the middle.

"That must be the silo," Samus murmurs.

We gesture towards the massive amount of roots surrounding it, "And we can't guess why it's down."

We go through another few rooms and maintenance corridors occupied by bipedal Zebesians and blast a door guard X and follow Samus into a large cylindrical room. There aren't any exits except for the one we entered.

"Well, I guess we're stuck," Samus commented, "Can you cut through walls?"

"Maybe. Never tried it though. Wait, what's that sound?" We hear a sort of scuttling noise above us and look up. "Oh, boy. We're in some serious trouble."

"How do you know?" Samus asks.

"We're an inter-dimensional traveler, so we've got access to a lot of info that you don't. This thing was one of the few things we've done any real research on. Yakuza." A giant spider sambles out of a duct, opns its mouth, and spits three balls of fire out on the ground. We dodged it and both of us started firing our most powerful attacks into its open mouth. It screamed several times and started to flash from red and black to purple before slamming its mouth shut.

"Well," Samus growled, "That wasn't too bad."

"You've seen nothing," The spider-like creature scrambled down the wall, moving in a difficult to predict pattern. After a few seconds of this it opened its mouth, prompting us to continue firing, and spits more fire. "This… is going to hurt," We murmur and jump into the mandibles of the creature with a cry of "Download!"

 **Copy Form  
** **Name: Yakuza  
** **Type: Parisite: Wetware Semi-Sentient Animal Host: Wetware nNon-Sentient Animal  
** **Strengths: High Durability, Invulnerable in most points, High Contact Damage  
** **Weaknesses: Mouth vulnerable when open  
** **Abilities: Spit Fire, Bite, Fly (2** **nd** **Form)  
** **Known Morph Restrictions: Metroid  
** **Copy Complete  
** **Verification Complee**

We release a telekinetic blast right after the copy completes, forcing the creature to release us. Just after it does, it drops and slams into the ground, probably planning to take us with it. A moment later it scramble back to the wall and continues its usual movement pattern. We continue to fire missiles and sniper rounds at it frantically, slowly damaging it. Eventually it breaks apart, its legs falling off, and then things start to get interesting.

Samus grimaces, "At least now I know what I'll be getting from this." The creature is now doing somersaults, bouncing upward and topping its arc in a sine wave pattern, randomly bouncing off of walls. Each time it tops its arc. It drops some sort of worm-like projectile that splatters when it hits the floor. We fire into its mouth whenever it gives us the chance, and it slowly fades from purple to black and red. It takes us several minutes to destroy it, but then we make short work of the Core-X. Samus recovers her Space Jump ability and uses it to infinitely jump up to the exit the spider made. We fly up after her using telekinesis and land next to her while she activates the auxiliary power systems. The next room is a navigation room.

* * *

"Biometric and recharge rooms are online. Elevators and hatches are still should be able to find the root of the matter somewhere in the Sector 2 area, but. I can't be any more precise than that. There's an access shaft here." The AI disconnects

We follow Samus through the main silo room and into the aforementioned access shaft, quickly entering Sector 2 and moving down to a hatch. We glance at it before flicking our thermal visor. We immediately stand to attention and gesture to Samsu, _Enemy coming._

Samus mouths, "SA-X?" To witch we nod. She nods, ejects a few Ice Missiles and tosses them to us before making a few gestures of her own, _Stack up, me left, you right. Me shoot, it stop, it start, you shoot._

We nod in confirmation, silently thanking whoever invented standard military hand signals and step to the right of the door. The SA-X opens the hatch and starts to enter. As soon as the door is clear, Samus shoots it in the back with an Ice Missile, freezing it. "Go! Go! Go!" We fly around the door frame, opening three shutters on increasingly high platforms. The SA-X enters, having unfrozen, and we fire a missile at it, stopping it before it has a chance to fire. Samus follows us through the next hatch, weapon trained on the enemy. We dive over a partition in the next room, followed by Samus. We activate our X-Ray visuals and watch the SA-X decide that it's lost us and leave. We think it dissolves into a Core-X and phase through a wall. We breathe a sigh of relief and go back over the partition.

"Not going to lie, that scared me," Samus confides.

"Only a fool doesn't feel fear in the face of danger," We respond.

Samus nods respectfully, "Now let's go get some power back." She jumps up some platforms and into a series of rooms, blasting Kihunters all the way. They were especially annoying since they can take a lot of damage. Eventually, we come up to a door guard and blast it. We fall into a chamber with roots everywhere. At one side is a giant mass surrounding something that vaguely resembles a Chozo Statue. Two bulbs in the ceiling spit pollen and two other flowers sit in the bottom, surrounded by water.

"Watch out for the flowers, they bite," Samus says. From anyone else we'd take it as a joke, but Samus is clearly serious. She begins to fire missiles into the mass while we keep the pollen off her. Shortly the buds dissolve, the bottom flowers begin firing pollen of their own, and the front of the root dissolves. It extrudes three prongs and Samus ducks just in time to avoid a plasma shot. We succeed in dodging, but just barely. The prongs come out of the bottom and Samus jumps, still firing after that, the root dissolves completely, revealing a Super Core-X, which we quickly dispatch. Samus recovers her Plasma Beam ability, allowing her weapon to pierce through enemies and increasing the damage. The ambient noises of the station return, indicating that power is online. We travel back to the Sector 2 Navigation Room to receive our next orders.

* * *

"You upgraded your beam? That is… unexpected. We hadn't finished development on the data yet." The AI stops talking for a minute and we hear a slight rumble, "There's been an explosion in Sector Five. The damage is quite extensive. It was caused by a bioweapon stored on the station called—"

"Nightmare, yes, I'm familiar with it." Samus nods, "I battled it back on the BOTTLE SHIP, It has gravity manipulation and an insanely high damage potential. I don't know why the Galactic Federation would have revived it."

"Good. I don''t know where he is. Find him and destroy him." The AI disconnects and we head to sector 5

We are forced to travel through a lot of water areas. This isn't a problem for us, since we simply don't let the water touch us, but for Samus it's much more of an issue. Eventually we leave the water and jump into a platform with a door guard. Samus kills the guard with a single blast from her Plasma Beam. She sighs and murmurs, "Things are about to get interesting." We enter the room, dodge some fall blocks and collect an Energy tank and fall into the chamber below. Nightmare drifts up through the floor. It's a blue creature with a pair of dangling arms and a module coming form its fires a few Missiles into the module and it starts to spin. Gravity increases, slowing both of us down. We use telekinesis to ensure our attacks don't miss, and to allow us to move at full speed, keeping most of its attention. After a little while, the gravity module breaks off, restoring gravity to normal. The arms fire beams out of them, causing near-constant things to dodge. Once the manipulator is destroyed, the mask breaks off, revealing a face made of green goo. We continue to fire at the face while it starts to swirl around the room, making aiming and dodging much more difficult. Goo leaks off of its face, and it eventually explodes, revealing its Core-X form. This doesn't cause any real problems, and Samus's suit soon flashes purple, regaining its gravity manipulation power.

We run through a long series of water-filled corridors now that Samus is unaffected, entering Sector 4 and entering a massive maze. Eventually, we find a security room for level 4 hatches.

Eventually, we find a data room, which takes much longer than it should because of an especially annoying type of enemy we encounter that requires taking hits from afar. The new upgrade allows Samus to charge a Missile that does damage in a large sphere.

"I don't approve of you opening hatches without approval. Exercise better judgment in the future. But at any rate, the security robot you fought in Sector 3 has been infected by the X and is in Sector 6 now. You are authorized to destroy it."

 **And that's that chapter sorted. I've got about three chapters left here and I'll be clear!**

 **I'm really excited to announce that the next one will be a crossover with FourthWallBreaker's OCs Maria and Khrista in a crossover world. I'llhave that ready to go in... maybe two weeks at most. I've been looking forward to this for a long time...**

 **See ya next chapter! Until next time, this is SabaraOne, Logging OUt!**

 **EDIT: Wow... there's a reason I don't use fancy formatting anymore.**


	10. Chapter 10: Hunter

**Chapter 10: Hunter**

We travel to Sector 6, tossing out ideas for where the robot might be.

"It's probably not on the map," we state. Samus agrees, and we decide to just go on instinct. We enter a few rooms and find one we've never been in before. Samus drops a Power Bomb and destroys a back wall, revealing a hatch, followed by another room, down, right and through the floor. The room we're in has a pool of water in the center and a quick bomb reveals a long ladder on top.

"Look familiar?" We ask

"Yes, I assume this is the place."We travel through a few more rooms and come up to a gate. An alarm starts to sound.

"No Entry Without Authorization… No Entry Without Authorization…"

"We hear an explosion and race back to the supposed battle arena. The water is now electrified from the robot's damaged components. Samus latches onto the ladder and we dive in, charging up electricity before joining Samus. The robot now has a new trick: when it pops up its turret it fires seeker missiles instead of the old fire bombs. This actually makes it a lot easier because Samus just shoots the missiles with Plasma while we fire bolts of electricity into the robot, overloading it. After a lot less time than our first encounter, it is destroyed and turnes into a Super Core-X. Samus destroys it and regains her Wave Beam. We go through the gate that needs authorization using the Wave Beam to open it from the wrong side.

"Restricted Lab," Samus reads off of a sign on the wall, "What would they need a restricted lab for… Oh, those stupid… idiotic…" Samus struggles to find a proper insult before we spit out an especially vile Klingon curse.

"Metroids," we confirm, walking into a chamber filled with tanks containing the infamous little green floating brains. We start to hear a sort of humming, though we don't know where it comes from. "Why don't they seem interested in you, Samus?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe they see me as part Metroid since the Vaccine, so that may be part of it. And if you're really not alive in the traditional sense, that would explain why they aren't interested in you," Samus thinks, "Have to look into that once I get back to the Federation."

We enter the next room and see more containment chambers. One has a larger Larval Metroid. Another has one where two nuclei have disappeared, a carapace has grown on top, two eyes are visible, and four small limbs and a horn can be seen, an Alpha Metroid. Another tank has one where the eyes have divided into two groups of three, the limbs are much more pronounced, and the horn is larger, a Gamma Metroid. The next Metroid is bipedal, with clawed hands, a leech-like mouth, and a tail, the Zeta Metroid. In a separate room we see a _very_ large Metroid, similar in appearance to the Zeta. It's about three times the size of a human, the Omega Metroid. As soon as it sees us it begins to thrash violently. At the same time we hear an explosion and decide that leaving is a good idea.

As soon as we enter, we see the SA-X attacking the Infant Metroids. It's already broken open the tanks and several shattered piles of ice litter the floor. Within a few seconds it's overwhelmed and destroyed by several dozen vengeful Metroids.

"Warning: One Minute to Separation… Warning: One Minute to Separation…"

"Let's go," we say in response to the siren. We easily dodge bits of falling debris and escape out of an upper escape hatch. Behind us, the Restricted Lab ejects into space and explodes. We enter a navigation room next to the escape corridor.

"Convenient how this is right here," we comment.

"Yes, that's what worries me," Samus confirms.

"You shouldn't have done that," the AI starts, "You disobeyed your orders." Samus simply glares at the AI, refusing to respond, "As you've noticed, the Federation had created a Metroid Breeding Program – for peaceful purposes only of course – but perhaps you already knew this. You must have had your suspicions when you saw Sector 1. Such a faithful recreation of SR388. Perfect for breeding any stage of Metroid, up to Omega and possibly even Queen. But hurry, you _must_ get to your ship. The SA-X has sensed its natural predator and prey and one is coming to destroy you."

Samus breaks her silence, "ONE? How can there be more than one?"

"The X reproduce asexually. There are at least ten SA-X on the station right now." The AI states, "Now return to the ship. Stop only at Navigation rooms." It disconnects, leaving us staring at each other.

"The elevator won't put us anywhere familiar," we state, "We should split up to cover more ground. Keep our locations and map data synced."

"Sounds good. We're both strong enough to take care of ourselves," Samus nods and taps a control on her Arm Cannon. A new icon appears on the map in our HUD next to our location, showing Samus's location. We nod, transmit our own location, and race up the elevator, which deposits us in Sector 1 in a maintenance corridor. At about this point we notice that the background hum we heard in the Restricted Lab has disappeared.

We travel through several areas we've never seen before, eventually entering a nearly empty room. The only content is a single egg on the ground. As we approach, it starts to crack open, and the top falls off. An InfantMetroid pops out, squealing at us. Instantly our mind is filled with unconditional love for the little creature, and we hold out a hand for a moment before realizing that it's not our love we're feeling. It's the Metroid sending it to us telepathically.

 _It needs a parent,_ we think. We start to speak, both to it telepathically and audibly, knowing it won't understand either, " _Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad… Oy'an._ I know name as my child, Hunter." _Oy'an_ 's response is to send a sense of confusion. We respond with acceptance, and receive happiness.

The Metroid starts to happily fly around us, squealing with delight. We send a sense of excitement and say _"Oya!_ Let's hunt!" We start to move out, _Oy'an_ following happily behind. One of the brown turtle-like creatures floats towards us. Hunter starts to fly forward, but we hold out our hand, freezing him in place. He makes a confused chirp, and we respond with patience. After a moment we send approval and release him with a cry of _"k'slanar!_ Go!" Hunter squeals and latches onto the target, draining its life energy. It doesn't even leave an X when it dissolves. _"Kandosii!_ Very good!"

The two of us spend an hour or so exploring the sector. We spend a lot of that time teaching Hunter the two languages we use, English and _Mando'a._ He's a fast learner and is conversational within that hour. We can't help but think about the tragedy that the Metroids were exterminated before the residents of this dimension were able to truly make first contact. While we haven't told him, we've also started designing cybernetic implants so that he can more easily coexist with humans by speaking and using electricity as energy instead of life force.

" _I never thought that vibrations could be used to communicate"_ Hunter says to us telepathically.

"It's how most species we know communicate," we respond audibly. He's learned to interpret the vibrations through his jelly.

" _That's weird. They're weird."_

"It really is, it's a slow method, not much security of transmission, easy to misinterpret…" We go on like this for several minutes, discussing the merrits of several different alternative methods of communication.

" _I like the idea of a combination of normal light and lasers. Gives the option of both group and tight-beam conversation."_

"And how many times have lasers been developed by evolution?"

" _Just a thought…"_ Hunter says disappointedly.

"No, it's a good idea, it just wouldn't happen naturally. Heck, humans can record vibrations on certain surfaces to get the sound," we reassure. "Now, where _is_ Samus?"

" _Don't you know?"_ Hunter asked curiously.

"Yes, it's a human thing. They often ask questions to which they already know the answer." We check our map, quickly locating Samus. She's rapidly jumping around in a single room, obviously battling something powerful. "And it looks like she may be in trouble. Let's go!"

" _Oya!"_ Hunter squeals happily as we start to move toward Samus's location. We quickly find her just after she stops moving, presumably because she's defeated her target.

The chamber she's in opens and she flies out, encased in a blowing energy field. She quickly assesses the situation and opens her Missile Launcher, charging for a diffusion ice shot and she yells, "Composite! Metroid behind you!"

" _Oy'an! K'norac!"_ We shout, adding a telepathic jolt of alarm. "Hunter gives a terrified screech and disappears around a corner, "Samus, he's with me."

"With…? Oh," Samus almost immediately understands what we mean. Her missile launcher closes, cutting off the charge. "… Hopefully your kid will end better than mine did…" Her visor opens and she wipes a tear from her eye.

We decide to change the subject and gesture to the door Samus left, "So, who was that?"

"Ridley. One of the easiest fights I've had with him. Not to mention one of his smaller incarnations. At least I got my Screw Attack back. You saw the field, and it lets me kill enemies by hitting them," Samus doesn't smile, but we know she's in a good mood.

"Hey Hunter, it's okay now, you can come back," we poke our head around the corner.

" _The hybrid won't freeze me?"_ The nervous Metroid asks.

"No, Samus won't shoot you. We explained the situation."

" _Okay…"_ Hunter edges around the corner before darting out and hiding behind our head.

"Samus, meet our son Hunter."

"Huh, didn't know Metroids have genders," Samus says.

Hunter complains telepathically, "He says he doesn't, it's just his choice," We shrug, "And we're not going to argue."

"How are you talking to him?" Samus asks, curious.

"We're a half-telepath, so we use that to communicate with other telepathic species like Metroids. He's a fast learner. He actually learned to hear on his own…" We listen to a telepathic comment, "And he says he wishes that one of his species could have learned that skill earlier. Maybe if they had there'd still be a species."

We draw our blades, "We've been meaning to do this for a while," Our blades flash with green-white energy, vibrating at a high frequency that greatly increases their cutting potential, "Maybe this will stand in for our Screw Attack."

"Maybe," Samus agrees, "Let's get back to the navigation room. I'm sure the AI has something to say about my unauthorized recovery of the Screw Attack."

"Shouldn't be far. It's right this way," Samus gestures and we set off.

As soon as we step into the Navigation room, the doors lock. We connect, Samus in front, us slightly behind, and Hunter hovering behind our right shoulder.

"You have a Metroid with you," the AI says.

" _Thank you Captain Obvious,"_ Hunter complains.

"Yes," we start, "We do, and he says that he noticed the fact."

"Samus, I must order that you destroy it."

"No. It imprinted on Composite, like the Baby did with me. I will not take that from them," Samus refuses.

"I'm ordering you—"

"There are very few orders I will disobey from you. This is one of them." Samus stands firm on her decision.

"…Okay. Samus, I'm ordering you to return to your ship. The Galactic Federation will be arriving shortly to take command of the situation. You must leave," the AI starts.

"And that's the other one. I won't leave this station until the X are destroyed."

"I'm sorry Samus, I have my orders." The AI disconnects and the doors remain locked.

"The idiots!" Samus cries, "They'll just get infected and bring the X to the rest of the galaxy! Galactic civilization will end!"

"Whoever thought up that plan…" we think for a moment, _"Kaysh mirsh solus."_

"And that means?" Samus prompts.

"His – or her – brain cell's lonely."

Samus chuckles, "That's good, I'll have to remember that one."

"Replace _kaysh_ with _gar_ to use it directly," we suggest.

"Thanks, now, let's see if we can convince our friend here," she gestures toward the display, and by extension the AI, "To open up."

"I told you to stay put," the AI says when we connect, "You can't make me open the doors."

"If I set off the self-destruct, it'll destroy the X before the Federation can get here. Adam, if I don't do this The X will be released and destroy life as we know it," Samus seems to be unaware of her tongue slip.

"… Adam?" The AI asks, almost confused seeming.

"An old friend," Samus backpedals, "Someone who died to save me. You wouldn't understand."

"…I believe… that your friend made the wrong choice," the AI says. Samus doesn't, but we notice a shift in the AI's speech.

"You! Don't you _dare_ insult Adam's sacrifice like that!" Samus shouts.

"What I do understand is that you're not thinking this through fully. If you simply destroy the station, the X on SR388 will survive, and the Federation will take their samples anyway," the navigation room doors unlock. Samus's eyes widen in shock, "But if you set the station to collide with the planet, the explosion will destroy _all_ of the X. This is your most important mission. Any objections, Lady?"

"No objections… Adam," Samus gives a determined nod and races out of the room. We follow her up the elevator, our destination, the Operations Deck.

 **Sorry about any strange numbering you omay have noticed in the last couple of chapters. I actually merged Sectors 5 and 6 due to their being quite short and forgot to update the next chapter's number. I've corrected that problem.**

 **And oh boy have I been looking forward to introducing Hunter for a while.**


	11. Chapter 11: Alpha and Omega

**Hey, it's SabaraOne back with another chapter!**

 **Thanks to FourthWallBreaker for the review. Yes, that's how Composite met Hunter. I reviewed the sequence from Metroid 2 where Samus meets the Baby and sort of worked from there. But how could you know about him…? *heh*, it's not like we haven't been working on a previously announced crossover or anything, right? ;) (Wow, I actually just used an emoticon.) And yes, there's not much left. Just this chapter to go.**

 **Chapter 11: Alpha and Omega**

We step onto the operations deck. It's the large room near the first Data Room where Samus got her Missiles from. We start to climb up to a high ledge we couldn't get to before. As soon as we approach the door to the Ops room with the controls we need, we hear a loud crash. Samus spits out a curse as an SA-X resolves in the middle of the room. We think quickly, open a Navigation Room nearby and use telekinesis to throw Hunter in.

" _What did you do that for mom?"_ Hunter asks, annoyed.

" _Because the SA-X has an Ice Beam and we don't know what your cold resistance is,"_ we respond, _"And it's Bu'ir, not mom."_

" _Sorry Bu'ir."_

"Alright SA-X, Let's do this," Samus hisses through clenched teeth. She charges up aWave Beam and fires it at full power. The SA-X gives a cry and attempts to hit Samus with a Screw Attack, but jumps too high. "Wonder if it'll do that again," Samus murmurs, charging a shot, jumping over the SA-X's Ice Beam shot, and counterattacking. The SA-X seems to be locked in a pattern. We quickly get bored and fire a volley of blaster bolts at it. Immediately releases and things get a lot more fun. We draw our blades and they Ignite with telekinetic energy. The SA-X starts to jump and dodge wildly, spraying Ice Beam shots in all directions. We leap down and stab our blades into the SA-X. It screeches and pulls away, the visible damage quickly repairs, but it still seems weakened. Samus charges a Diffusion Missile and freezes the SA-X in place for a moment, taking the opportunity to fire a Wave Beam charge into it. We sheath our blades and begin to fire a constant stream of blaster bolts at it, only stopping for two seconds every twenty seconds to reload.

After a few minutes, the SA-X collapses to the ground, unable to continue. It lets out an earsplitting scream and transforms into some sort of hybrid of Samus and a Hornoad.

"Not cool," Samus snarls, opening fire.

" _Oy'an, up!"_ We deploy our digitizing laser and create a shaped detonator charge. We slap it onto the locked hatch Hunter is trapped behind and slam down the plunger. The hatch blows open, setting off even more alarms then are already blaring. An ecstatic Metroid flies out of the room and begins to happily feed on the SA-X. Within a minute, it's been destroyed and its Beam Core-X has been defeated. The unshielded Core-X escapes down a blocked-off shaft.

" _Kandosii!_ Very good, Hunter!"

" _But_ Bu'ir, _I didn't destroy it!"_ Hunter says unhappily.

"But you defeated its final two forms much faster than we could have," we reassure him, "You couldn't have know it would do that. It's only a mistake if it could have been prevented."

Samus nods in agreement, "If _Kandosii_ means what I think it does, than it's the proper word." She jumps back up to the operations room.

A moment later, we hear a voice announce "Destination: Planet SR388. Arrival In Three Minutes"

"Let's go!" Samus blazes out of the Ops Room like her rear's on fire. We follow her to the main deck and to the hanger bay. The area seems to be progressively more damaged and colder, though Hunter doesn't seem to notice. We feel a slight breeze flow past us. Samus recognizes it at the same time we do. "Hull breach!"

"We're vac-sealed, are you?"

"Yes, how about you Hunter?"

" _I don't need air, but I don't get why you ask. What's a hull breach?"_

"We'll explain later, he says yes."

We race onto the docking bay and find that Samus's ship is gone, replaced by a hole to space. So is ours, but we dismissed it earlier.

"Where did it go?" Samus asks over the helmet comms, "The ship can't auto launch!"

" _Bad! Bad!"_ Hunter senses something coming. A second later, an Omega Metroid crashes through the wall. We both immediately open fire, but none of our weapons have any effect. It raises one clawed hand and—

Pain. Immeasurable pain. The static fades from our vision and we find that we're on the far side of the bay alongside Samus. Hunter has taken refuge behind a wall. We glance at our hands, and our visuals must still be out of whack because they seem to be flickering with orange static. Samus gasps and we look up in time to se a Core-X – no, _the_ Core-X reforming the SA-X. It turns to us and we hear a click in our audio comms.

"Worthy prey… You defeat us… We have… nothing left… We fight… for you…" The SA-X's voice is similar to Samus's, but distorted with static and a collective resonating quality. It steps forward and opens fire on the chest of the Omega Metroid, causing a weak shriek of pain. We assume it''s meant to be stronger, but the dropping pressure doesn't make that easy. The Metroid swipes at the SA-X, forcing it to revert. Samus jumps up and absorbs it. A sort of wireframe hologram appears over her and a new suit forms in it, matching the SA-X's. She begins to fire on the Omega Metroid with a newly reclaimed Ice Beam. Our vision starts to fuzz out with static and our consciousness spirals away…

* * *

Identifier:Alpha's status transitions from Status:Standby to Status:Online. Alpha executes Action:Sensor:Look:Self. Alpha's base color has changed from Identifier:Composite's normal red to orange and circuits have faded to a much darker blue. Alpha executes Action:Sensor:Look:Area. Alpha quickly locates Identifier:Hunter performing Action:Defensive:Hide and Identifier:Samus performing Action:Offensive:Attack on Lifeform:Hostile:Metroid:Omega using Object:Weapon:Ranged:ArmCannon that fires projectiles combining Property:Weapon:Ice and Property:Weapon:Plasma. Alpha executes Action:Output:Speak:Comms to Samus, announcing "Identifier:Samus, execute Action:Defensive:Dodge!" Samus does as ordered, and Alpha activates an energy buffer that Composite was unaware of. It activates Ability:Chaos:Spear. "CHAOS… SPEAR!" A blast of energy that exploded on contact. Lifeform:Hostile:Metroid:Omega lost contact with the floor and was ejected from Object:SpaceStation:BSL and onto a collision course with Object:CellesuralBody:Planet:SR388. Alpha noticed that Alpha was near beginning to destabilize and triggered reversion to Identifier:Composite.

* * *

 **POV: 3** **rd**

Samus's ship begins to land in the now open docking bay with one minute to spare on the collision countdown. Composite's armor fades to its usual color scheme as they collapse.

Hunter floats out from behind the wall he'd taken refuge behind and latches onto their head, repeatedly squealing what is barely recognizable as the word _"Bu'ir! Bu'ir! Bu'ir!"_ in concern. He begins to drag them towards the ship's boarding ramp with difficulty.

"Here little guy, let me help," Samus deftly scoops Composite up into a rescuer's carry and hauls them onto the ship, "Never leave a comrade behind! Let's go!" She unceremoniously dumps her in front of the Etecoons and Dachoras, barely stopping long enough to shout "Hold them still!" And running up to the front. She presses a few buttons and pushes the throttle to maximum, firing the ship's forward weapons to blast the opposite side of the bay open. The shop's engines flash brighter and the ship's afterburners come online with a roar. The ship gets clear just in time.

The BSL station collides with planet SR388 and explodes. A second later, an even larger explosion vaporizes the planet.

"At last… it's over," Samus sighs. She checks her scanners for a moment before deactivating her Power Suit, revealing a form-fitting one piece blue jumpsuit under it. She doesn't turn away from her piloting, but directs her words to Hunter, "One time I deactivated my power Suit early and was shot down by Space Pirates shortly afterward. I'm not going through that again." She turns to the Etecoons and Dachoras, who have been diligently keeping Composite from flying around the cockpit. "Take them to the medbay and make sure they're secure. I don't want to risk them having another outburst like they did back with the Omega Metroid."

The Etecoons and Dachoras make affirmative noises and carry Composite back to the medbay and strap them into a bed. Samus locks the ship into a slightly unstable orbit that'll have her crashing into the sun in a few months, but does have the advantage of being irregular and harder to trace before heading back herself.

* * *

 **POV: Composite**

We wake up in a starship. We can feel the slight thrumming of the drives and hear the sounds of medical equipment. We try to move our arms and legs but restraints block us. We angle our head up and see a woman in a blue jumpsuit with long blonde hair checking a readout. "Who are you?"

"You're awake Composite," Samus says, turning around.

" _Bu'ir!"_ Hunter cries telepathically in relief.

"Hey Samus, Hey _Oy'an_ ," we respond. "What happened?" Samus exchanges a look with someone, presumably Hunter as best she can. "Oh… Oh… now it's coming back…" We review our memories of the recent past for a moment, "Well. Hopefully _that_ won't happen too often."

Samus taps a control on the bed and the restraints pop open, "Yes, though that _was_ a powerful attack."

"We didn't know we could do that. How long were we out?"

"Just over an hour," Samus says.

" _Bu'ir, you're okay?"_ Hunter asks.

"Yes, we're fine. Did we complete the mission?"

"Yes," Samus nods, voice assuming an almost clinical flat tone, "The BSL Space Station and the planet SR388 were both completely destroyed. All known X parasites were obliterated in the blast."

"Good," we nod and start to stand, "Then our work here is done. Maybe we'll meet again, Samus."

"Yes, maybe we will," Samus agrees. She holds out her hand and we clasp each other's arms, wrist-to-elbow in a Mandalorian tradition that needs no explaining to someone who's fallen off as many ledges – and been dropped off by physically weak comrades - as Samus. We give Samus a slightly questioning look and Samus nods. We copy her form with a cry of "Download!"

 **Copy Form  
** **Name: Samus Aran  
** **Type: Wetware/Hardware Hybrid Sentient  
** **Abilities: Modular Power Suit. Absorb X Parasites.  
** **Strengths: Strong Armor, High Agility, Physically Strong  
** **Weaknesses: Cold and Heat outside of Varia Suit  
** **Known Morph Restrictions: Metroid  
** **Copy Complete  
** **Verification Complete**

We nod in thanks and say, "Now… where _is_ our ship?" We activate our Ki andget into contact with the Cobra, relaying our position. Three minutes later, the twho ships have docked and Hunter follows us on board.

"Goodbye Composite. I'll see you around," Samus calls. The airlocks close and the ships detach.

" _I'll miss her,"_ Hunter says.

"Yes, we will too,"we say as Hunter floats to the copilot's seat. We strap him in awkwardly and sit in the pilot's seat. "Let's go home, shall we?"

" _Let's go!"_ Hunter squeals happily. We enter some coordinates and a swirling vortex of blue-purple energy appears in front of the Cobra before pulling back. When it pulls past us, the world outside the cockpit seems to be out of phase. We hear the sound of the hyperdrive roaring and the universe disappears in a flash of blue-white light as the portal closes behind us.

 **Finish… and… Clear! This story is done! Next up will be a crossover with FourthWallBreaker's Maria's Adventure series, so keep an eye to the sky and an ear to the ground.**

 **Alpha… Hopefully it won't be showing up soon. Just to make this clear, that Alpha segment was in first person, Alpha just isn't capable of Alpha's self using pronouns. Alpha** _ **shouldn't**_ **appear all that often, so don't worry. Though I am surprised that FF didn't barf on Alpha's thought pattern.**

 **Until then, this is SabaraOne, logging out!**


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